Kokoro ka
by kaliawai512
Summary: In which Orihime has a strange, crazy, complicated, wonderful life with the last person she expected, who never smiles and always holds her hand. Continuation of "Kono Tenohira." Oneshot collection, detailing their joys, pains, and struggles along the way. UlquiHime.
1. Choco

**Well, I'd like to give full credit for this story to those who reviewed Kono Tenohira… because I fully intended on that being a oneshot, never continued, and to never write pairing stuff again. But it was loads of fun to write, and after receiving so much positive feedback… well. I literally wrote a 3000-word summary for this potentially-lengthy collection **_**that night. **_**Anyway, this is a continuation of that, so it will best make sense if you read the oneshot first. I have tons of chapters planned out and no set update schedule—and this will continue for as long as my interest in Bleach lasts (and as long as reader interest remains) or until I reach the ending I currently foresee. Requests are totally welcome and appreciated, if you're interested—just as long as they fit into the flow of the story and the relationship as this story portrays it. Also, I don't write sexual content, even non-explicit: sorry, not my thing. Almost anything else is fair game, though. I am also attempting to post these in chronological order, but, well, if I get a really inspiring idea (or request!) that takes place in a time frame that has already passed, I may write it anyway.**

**This story (as a whole) containers spoilers for the Arrancar arc and the UNMASKED bonus chapter, with the basic current manga plotline mentioned but not spoiled. If there are any spoilers for current manga, I'll warn you beforehand.**

**Culture note: in Japan, Valentine's Day is focused on girls giving chocolate hearts to all the guys they know. "Giri choco" is store-bought, cheap chocolate, usually given to male friends and acquaintances (and sometimes female friends, if the giver is generous). "Honmei choco" is often homemade, and is usually given only to significant others. A month later, on White Day (March 14), guys are expected to get "return gifts" for all the girls who bought them chocolates… usually more expensive than the amount the girls spent on chocolates. XD And though I had thought that the last section of Kono Tenohira would take place around March, apparently cherry blossoms actually bloom in early February, so Valentine's Day hadn't actually passed yet. Convenient!**

**Oh, and disclaimer: I **_**do not **_**promote stalking or obsession as a healthy relationship behavior. It's not healthy for anyone involved, and people deserve their right to privacy: a relationship involving stalking is not a good relationship to be in and it indicates a problem. I'm writing about a **_**fictional, nonhuman character **_**in a **_**fictional world. **_**I mean, this is Bleach: I rather hope that in our real lives, we don't have civil conversations with someone who kidnapped their sister and tried to have her unjustly executed due to a promise made to his dead parents' grave, then nearly killed us several times (really, I love Byakuya, but still…), or someone who exhibits any one of the countless unhealthy behaviors Bleach demonstrates. In Bleach, these sorts of things are normal, and it's hard to find someone who hasn't done something pretty bad at least once. As long as they're not trying to kill you, apparently it's fine … or sometimes even if they **_**are **_**trying to kill you, a la Kenpachi.**

**Hope you all enjoy! And thanks **_**so **_**much to my reviewers for both "Kono Tenohira" and "Jinsei," and to the anonymous reviewers who I couldn't respond to personally. You guys are great!**

_**1: Choco  
**_

Kurosaki-kun had never noticed when she made him honmei choco.

She couldn't blame him, she supposed. The first two times had been after the loss of his powers, when he lived in a fog only those close to him noticed. He spoke to them like he had built a paper-thin version of himself, cheerful and friendly enough, and wrapped it around the real him. The third time … none of them had been in their right minds after the second war. Besides, Kurosaki-kun was only observant in rare instances, like pointing out opponents' weaknesses in battle, or their changes in fighting style. He hadn't noticed when Ishida-kun got new glasses, or when Orihime started wearing her hairpins on her school jacket, or even when Tatsuki-chan grew her hair out—at least until it reached her mid-back and he came to school one day, jolted, and shouted, "Tatsuki, when'd you get a mullet?!"

She understood that even then, on some level, but her ever-hopeful self had still spent hours the night before the fourteenth mixing the ingredients, shaping the liquid into the mold, and wrapping it in a red box with a bow she spent an extra half hour picking out.

All her chocolate hearts were wrapped with care, but his always stood out. Tatsuki-chan knew, because she always knew, and Sado-kun's expression never revealed one way or another, but Ishida-kun's eyes followed the chocolate from the time she took it out of her bag, held it out with both hands and an eager smile, until Kurosaki-kun took it in one palm, thanked her, and bit off a piece with all his casual charm. Only in the corner of her eye had she noticed Ishida-kun's, how it changed and melded to something that combined pity and admiration—and right at the end, frustration at Kurosaki-kun's obliviousness.

It took her three years to realize the full extent of Ishida-kun's skilled observation, and when it finally hit her, it was when she knew there would be no more carefully crafted honmei chocos wrapped in red boxes with tediously-chosen bows.

At least not just one.

On the Sunday of February 13th, while the cherry blossoms still bloomed around campus and she arrived to class every morning with tiny pink petals scattered over her shoulders, she stepped out of her dorm room first thing in the morning to find Ulquiorra-kun standing there, hands in pockets, pale jacket around his shoulders, with the blank, patient expression he wore every day.

She coughed so loud her chest stung.

"Sorry, Ulquiorra-kun … I'm sick today, I can't go out," she explained with fingers brushing the skin of her neck. Given that it was still early and she rarely wore makeup, she expected her eyes looked worn and glassy as they usually did, and her skin still pale in what she had once dubbed "morning face."

Ulquiorra-kun's brow creased for a split second before it smoothed out again. His eyes flicked over her face and upper body, lingering on the hand that hovered near her throat. Only five seconds later, he looked up again.

"You are lying, woman."

Orihime flinched.

"W-what? N-no I'm not! I'm sick, see?" She coughed as hard as she could, the scratch in her throat evident from the effort, and sniffed so loud the girls down the hall could probably hear. Then she smiled and chuckled, more hoarsely than usual, and rubbed her throat. "I'm coughing and my throat hurts and I've got a really bad headache, so I'm just gonna go back in my room and get some re—"

"I said you're lying," he cut her off, eyes hard and unchanged. "Stop lying to me."

She waved her hands in defense. "I'm not lying! Really! Why would I lie?"

He looked her up and down, toes to head, slow and calculating, before he finally settled on her eyes.

"If you are truly ill, then I will stay here with you."

"Oh, no!" she burst with a rapid shake of her head. "I wouldn't want you to get sick 'cause you've never gotten sick before and that'd probably be really bad!"

"Your roommate is there."

"Oh, Zoe-san's got the best immune system I've ever seen! She never gets sick! Right, Zoe-san?"

She turned back to the other girl sitting on the closest bed, her most recent crochet project and a ball of yarn balanced on her crossed legs. Zoe-san looked up, blinked, then grinned.

"Yep, healthy as a horse, I am!"

"Healthy as a wha … right, uh, yeah!" Orihime cut herself off, only just catching her blindness of Zoe-san's English idioms. She turned back toward the open doorway and faced Ulquiorra-kun with hands still in his pockets and face blank as ever. She giggled and shrugged. "Anyway, Ulquiorra-kun, I'm really sorry, but you'll just have to go back to your apartment. Or maybe look around town! Explore! Have some fun!"

"I have seen all of this town that is necessary," he replied.

She hummed. "Oh, well, then, uh … the library! You like it there, right? Go read some books!"

"I—"

"Anyway sorry but I really have to go so I'll see you later when I'm better okay bye now!"

The last thing she saw was his parted lips before she slammed the door in his face and clicked the lock shut.

She pressed her back to the door, held her breath, and only let it out when she heard the faint sound of slow, even footsteps walking back down the hall. She dropped her head and huffed a long sigh.

From her bed, Zoe-san snorted.

"No offense, but your boyfriend's gotta be the most gullible guy I've ever met if he bought _that _story."

Orihime hummed and glanced away with twisted lips and furrowed brow.

"And what do you mean he's never gotten sick before?" Zoe-san asked a second later, most of her attention thankfully on the half-finished hat in her lap.

Orihime jumped, then bit her lip.

"Huh … oh! Right!" she started, trying and failing not to stutter. "Well, I meant he's never gotten sick with … regular colds and stuff. Our strains. He's from out of town, you know! They have whole different colds there, so his immune system hasn't caught up yet!"

Zoe-san lifted one eyebrow, the motion slow and sarcastic, but shrugged and looked back to her current stitch.

"Well, I still haven't caught his accent, but I'm not good enough at Japanese to catch 'em all, so I'll let you be the judge," she decided. "Anyway, I'd give him at least ten minutes before you head out. He's … kind of a stalker."

"He's not a stalker!"

Another raised eyebrow. "… oh?"

Orihime coughed.

"He just … follows me around a lot. And waits for me outside the dorm room, and classes. And he usually wants to know where I am. And he's there every day … but he's fine if I hang out with other people! He just … likes to stay nearby."

"Yeah. That's called a stalker."

"No, no!" she insisted with hands waved in front of her. "He's just … uh … he's …"

"… a stalker?"

Orihime shifted her weight. "There's a better word for it, I just … can't think of it right now."

Zoe-san chuckled, shook her head, but turned back to the dark blue yarn in her hands. Orihime's tense shoulders dropped, and she held back the sigh that lingered in her throat.

Even though she didn't see him outside the dorm when she left, she still glanced over her shoulder the whole way to the grocery store and the whole way back, even in the aisles and the checkout line. She knew he could have been exceptionally good at following her without her noticing, though he didn't seem to go through the effort: he never concealed himself when he followed her, never tried to hide that he wanted to know where she was going. Sometimes she wondered if he was afraid she would disappear, or a powerful Hollow would pop up out of nowhere and attack her. She brushed the latter off when she remembered how perfectly aware he was of her ability to take care of herself against any threat likely to appear in this town nowadays, but the first lingered as a remnant of a possibility before she decided that whatever his reasons were, he was unlikely to stop soon.

He didn't show up this time, though, and she made it back to the dorm kitchen with her grocery bags hanging over her arms. She stuck the materials for that day's lunch and dinner in the fridge while she set to work mixing the ingredients for the chocolate, grateful, not for the first time, that the kitchen had been stocked with quality pans.

While she once might have made a big show out of making only one honmei choco, her ideas had since changed, and instead of just one, she set out eight decent-sized boxes on the counter to go along with the molds, each of them a different color with a different ribbon to match. She added caramel to one with a smile, and while seven of them were milk chocolate, she left one dark, adding a bit more sugar to make up for the bitterness. The kitchen filled with the warm, sweet scent and drew in several of her dorm-mates asking for a taste, and she gave each of them a spoon to lick as she filled the molds, slipped them into the fridge, and licked the pan clean before scrubbing the dried chocolate out. By the time her work was done, she had just enough time to get started on her own evening meal, but this time, none of her dorm-mates veered anywhere close.

Tatsuki-chan arrived just in time for dinner, and just after Orihime had placed the dried chocolates in their respective boxes. She brought her own food, as per usual—Orihime never could figure out why Tatsuki-chan wouldn't at least _try _her red bean cheese leek surprise—but was all too thrilled to open her own caramel-flavored chocolate heart a day early and munch down on it for dessert, while Orihime took her own gift chocolate and put it away for tomorrow. She left with a plastic bag filled with five other chocolate hearts, one each for Kurosaki-kun, Ishida-kun, Sado-kun, Kuchiki-san and Renji-kun. Her Monday classes had been canceled, by some stroke of luck, and rather than mail the chocolates, she had offered to take them in Orihime's stead since she was stopping back by their hometown to visit her parents anyway.

Orihime slipped back into her dorm room smelling of chocolate and cheese and leeks—not a bad mixture, maybe she would add chocolate next time—with her two remaining hearts in hand. As soon as Orihime held out her Valentine's Day gift, Zoe-san dropped her unfinished crochet project, bounced to her feet, and scarfed down the whole chocolate heart in thirty seconds flat.

The next morning, Orihime leapt out of bed at the first buzz of her alarm, and while Zoe-san remained dead asleep in her own bed, she dressed, packed up the smaller chocolates she had bought for her classmates, took the larger, homemade chocolate in her hand, and skipped out into the hall. She hummed the whole way, not minding when her dorm-mates flashed her confused glances as she passed them in the lobby.

She pushed open the glass front door and took the first step onto the porch, then turned to her right. A thin form stood not a meter away, hands in pockets, his second-favorite green coat buttoned over a black shirt. Orihime jolted and jerked the box behind her back as fast as her hands could manage.

"Wah! You—Ulquiorra-kun!"

Ulquiorra-kun shifted his weight to his other foot, as if he had been standing for too long. "Don't make such a fuss, woman."

She cleared her throat, leaned back and forth on her own feet, and tightened her grip on the box behind her back.

"You just, uh … you surprised me!"

His eyes slid down from her face, following her arms behind her. She supposed she should be grateful he didn't grab her wrist and pull her hands into view. He looked back up.

"I am always here in the mornings."

"… yeah. I guess you are," she muttered with a small cough. She rocked back on the heels of her shoes. "So, um … I feel a lot better today, so—"

"Lying does not suit you, woman, and you are exceptionally unskilled at it," he cut her off with a tinge of irritation, though not as much as his voice had once held.

She giggled, bit her lip, and glanced away. "… heh."

A brief gust of wind rustled their hair, and she cleared her throat.

"Well, um, I've … got something for you."

He said nothing, merely lowered his brow that fraction of a centimeter she wasn't sure anyone else but she could pick up. Nevertheless, she grinned, the faint thrill that rushed through her more excitement than anxiety for the first time in her life.

"Here." She brought the box out and stretched her arms forward with hands cupped together. "Happy Valentine's Day, Ulquiorra-kun!"

He blinked. She waited, and he tilted his head as he flicked his gaze over it, as if assessing it, before he met her eyes again.

"… this is what you did not wish to admit to me yesterday?"

She hummed and suppressed the giggle growing in her throat.

"It was a surprise!" She motioned toward her hands again, holding the pale green box out as far as she could without actually pressing it into his chest. "Go ahead! Open it!"

He glanced at the box, then back to her, then to the box again. At last, he lifted it from her hands and tugged away the shiny white ribbon with his usual grace and care. He draped it over his wrist and pulled off the top of the box. He paused. Then he reached pale, thin fingers inside and grasped the dark brown heart in his left palm. He stared down at it like an alien species, or like he had looked at her when she spoke of the heart in the Fifth Tower, a foreign concept which he knew of as no more than a textbook term with no definition.

"This is … chocolate?"

"Mm-hmm!" she confirmed, some of the tension in her shoulders slipping. "Dark chocolate, since I remember you like that better. A dark chocolate heart!"

His eyes snapped up to her. His brow creased for a second before he smoothed it out again. "… this is a heart?"

She nodded.

"Yep! Well, uh, not a _real _heart, obviously, but it's shaped like one!"

He blinked, then slid his gaze back down to the chocolate clutched in his hand. He looked it over as if it would prove to be something more than what he initially saw, but several seconds passed and the chocolate remained in his hand.

"This is not the shape of a heart."

Orihime blinked, rolled her inner lip between her teeth, and half-shrugged. "Um … I guess I've never shown you before, have I? But really, that's what they're shaped like! And that one's all for you!"

She clasped her hands behind her back, head high, and beamed even as he stared at the object in his hands like a small rock had fallen from space and she had decided to call it a tuba. His eyebrows lowered, and he set the heart back into its box, tied the ribbon in a quick bow around it, then slipped the box in his jacket pocket.

"I will eat it later," he explained. "First we will go to breakfast and have something of substance. Come, woman."

"Okay!"

He grabbed her hand, as he always did, and she skipped forward to catch up with his slightly longer stride before they fell into the same even, synchronized pattern as they did every day.

The chill of the February air gusted around them, carrying the voices of the other students as they passed. In the corners of her eye, Orihime caught several girls handing out chocolates, some of them discreet, others far more blatant, but Ulquiorra-kun did not seem to notice. He just held her hand and looked forward, so much that she sometimes wondered whether he even remembered her hand was in his. But occasionally his fingers would move, and if her arm twitched and came closer to her body, he would tug it back. She had stopped questioning him after a time, and she did not mind when she squeezed his hand and he did nothing but continue to walk. She knew he felt it.

Her lips twitched up, and did not fall back down.

"Arisawa Tatsuki came by your dormitory yesterday," he broke his customary silence a minute into their familiar trip.

She hummed. "Oh, yeah, Tatsuki-chan dropped b—wait, you saw her?"

She jerked her head toward him so fast her vision almost spun, but he kept his eyes ahead of him, their fingers intertwined, though she felt him tighten his grip even as their feet fell back into step. He nodded, though the movement was barely enough to see.

"I was outside," he explained, as if it should have been obvious. "She only noticed me after she left."

Orihime paused. "You … stayed there all day?"

"No."A long breath slid out of her tense chest, but seconds later he finished, "I went to the library to check out several books, then I came back here."

She blinked. Her eyes roamed over his face, but though she was sure he noticed her gaze, he did not face her. Her brow scrunched more and more, her lips parted, her eyes wide.

"And you just sat there? All day? Just … reading?"

"That is what I said."

Her eyebrows rose, and her next blink was so slow she might as well have been rolling the window of a car up and down.

At last, he shot her a glance, and for the first time she wondered exactly how many emotions her expression could display at once, and how clear they were to him. He never raised one eyebrow as some might have, but she could see the vague confusion in large green eyes. "What is it, woman?"

She opened her mouth, bit her lip, and shook her head, trying and failing to keep the faint smile off her face.

"… nothing."

He held her gaze for a few seconds longer, but said nothing else.

They both stayed silent the rest of the walk to the cafeteria. His fingers felt warmer against hers than she remembered, despite the chill in the air and the scent of winter swirling around them. Within that sharp, familiar smell, she caught the sweetness of chocolate—likely that of every other girl giving chocolate to a boy she knew—and she flicked her eyes every minute or so to pocket of his coat unoccupied by his hand. She could make out the faint shape of the box inside, and each time she did, her breath caught as she realized just how odd this all was.

She thought of asking whether he had heard of giri and honmei choco, but decided that she was certain he hadn't, and that it didn't matter anyway. Not to Ulquiorra-kun, and not to her.

He knew what the two of them were—whatever that was. He didn't need a chocolate heart to tell him that.

And neither did she.

He only let go of her hand when they got in line at the cafeteria, her with her meal plan and him with some of the cash Soul Society had given him, and even then, she saw his empty hand twitch as if it wasn't sure to do without hers. He gripped his tray with a firm yet somehow still elegant hold, and followed her with their trays through the hoards of other students. She bumped into several shoulders in the crowd, the room overwhelmed with the chattering of other voices and the smells of rice and eggs and meat and steamed vegetables, and even fresh fruit, something she had hardly thought to have for breakfast before she got to college. She found one of the few empty tables for two and set her tray down with a clatter, the ice in her glass of lemonade clicking against the plastic while the liquid threatened to spill over the edge. Ulquiorra-kun took his seat across from her, though far more graceful and slow.

While she adjusted her plate, he lifted the box out of his pocket and opened it again. She smiled at the thought that he might actually eat it this early in the day, albeit probably after he had had what he deemed "proper food." She looked down at her plate of eggs coated with blueberries and wasabi—the people working behind the counter always gave her the strangest looks for that—and licked her lips while Ulquiorra-kun just took the chocolate out of the box and picked up his knife. Orihime drew in a deep breath and relished the scent of breakfast, savory and sweet and spicy all at once.

"Mm, smells good!" she hummed as she rubbed her hands together and played with her spoon, still unused to the metal utensils they served to go along with the Western-style section of the cafeteria. She bounced in her seat. "Oh! That reminds me! I've got a special Valentine's Day dinner planned for us, so after my last class we can go to the dorm kitchen and I'll make it for us! You'll love it, I found the recipe online and it was really popular but I thought it looked a little boring so I added some—Ulquiorra-kun? What are you doing?"

Ulquiorra-kun did not look up. He held the blunt knife in one careful hand, like he might hold a pencil, while the other steadied the chocolate heart against the table. Orihime leaned toward him, but his hand blocked her view.

"I am correcting your work."

She blinked and leaned forward a bit more, but to no avail. "… huh?"

His eyes remained as concentrated as she had ever seen them, though without the creased brow and tense lips most people might wear.

"You claimed this was in the shape of a heart. That is incorrect, as I said," he answered at last. He lifted the knife, looked over the chocolate heart still covered by his other hand, then set the knife back on his plate. He slipped the chocolate into both his hands and held it out for her to see. "This should be accurate."

Orihime had to blink twice before her eyes registered the sight, and once more before she realized she was not making up.

Much of the chocolate had been cut away, leaving slices and chunks on the napkin near Ulquiorra-kun's plate. The heart had been carved into a square blunted at the edges, with five thin similarly curved rectangles sticking out from the top half. At first, she did not recognize it, though the shape was so familiar. It struck her too hard. Then it clicked, somewhere deep in her mind, and knocked her breath from her throat.

A palm and five fingers. Reaching out in the quiet air as the ash blew into the wind, or reaching for its partner as they walked toward class.

Her breath trembled as she forced it out. She swallowed and shook her head, faint and slow. "Ulquiorra-kun …"

"Wait."

He pulled the chocolate back. His eyebrows tensed and smoothed, and he picked up the knife to chip away at one edge of the shape. This time, she could see the gentle carving, fingers adept as if he had done this a thousand times, though she knew of no time when he could have done it before. She watched his movements with eyes just as wide, hardly remembering to blink.

"Wh—"

"There," he cut her off as he set the knife down once more. "The curve near your thumb was slightly more pronounced than it should be. This chocolate was too small for your hand to be traced, so I recommend making it larger next time. If you would like the extra pieces, eat them."

She parted her lips, but no matter how she tried, she could not make words come out. Her breath caught, her eyes burning, her cheeks flushed and her fingers trembling as she lifted them, though she dared not touch the new creation before her. She looked down at one of her own hands, then at the smaller chocolate hand held in Ulquiorra-kun's palm, and saw each curve match. As if he had long memorized the look of it, the length of her fingers, the way they swerved in and out, the way the middle finger tilted a bit to the right rather than going straight up. Everything held in his hand, represented in perfection.

Heart.

She had only just noticed the warmth that dripped from her jawbone to her lap when Ulquiorra-kun's brow creased.

"What is wrong, woman? What have I done to upset you?"

Orihime shook her head and felt the tears fly from her cheeks. She squeezed her eyes shut to dry them, but they formed anew. "N-nothing, you …"

"You are crying, woman," he noted, with a small tilt to his head. The heart lay in his palm, forgotten. "You are clearly upset."

She drew in a shivering breath as she stared at the chocolate, the bits and pieces he had cut off lying near the knife, the new shape as perfect as a mold.

He opened his mouth again, and she flung herself out of her chair, the legs screeching against the floor, and threw her arms around his neck. The chocolate fell and clattered on the table, his arms still at his sides, even as she squeezed him and pressed their cheeks together, eyes held shut and the pulse of life within him flowing beneath her hold.

"Happy Valentine's Day, Ulquiorra-kun," she whispered through the tears in her throat. "It's the best I've ever had."

Silence from him, amid the chattering of the other students spread around the room. Seconds passed. Then he scoffed, faintly, incredulity in his voice, yet also a gentle sense of wonder which had only just begun.

"How ridiculous. I was the one who received the gift."

She laughed, but her arms remained around his neck, and seconds later, she felt one of his reach up to rest his hand on the center of her back. Warm. Steady. Real.

The other students gawked and stared from the tables around them, but Orihime did not let go for another minute afterward, and she squeezed his hand the whole way from the cafeteria to her class.


	2. Head Hittin' 2

**Thanks so much for the reviews, guys! :) Both here and on my other stories!**

**The most I know about fighting is what I've seen on TV. So I kind of just winged what you'll see here. The story here is also rather darker than the first one. It's not full-on dark, but the last was pretty much light-hearted (pun _totally _intended) fluff, and while this has some, it's more serious. It handles with something I only sometimes see brought up: the consequences of Ulquiorra's ways of dealing with things, both how the real world reacts and how they affect Orihime, the ever-forgiving one. Despite this being technically UlquiHime, I don't imagine she would just let go of everything he has done in the past, or anything he does now of moral ambiguity (or stuff that's downright wrong)—though I **_**do **_**think she might fool herself into overlooking things for a while, at least until they return and smack her in the face. As for Ulquiorra, he's "grown up" in a world where someone can be killed because they're annoying, or because the killer is bored, and I doubt his integration into human society would be a totally smooth ride. Don't worry, though, fluff-lovers - there will be _plenty _of tooth-rotting fluff in later chapters. But drama and angst happen sometimes.  
**

**Oh, and in Japan, the emergency number is the opposite of in America: 119. I have … no idea why it's reversed. **

**Warning for violence. It approaches the T-rating, but it's fairly vague, so probably counts as K+. If any other chapters actually cross that line, I'll be sure to warn you.  
**

_**2: Head-Hittin' 2  
**_

"Are you sure, though? I mean _really _sure?"

"Woman, you stayed with me over the winter break and there were no issues. Unless you're trying to say you were discontent with our daily living arrangements at that time—"

"No, no!" she insisted, hands waving in front of her face as if trying to swat away bugs. Then she grinned, and he wondered how her mouth could move that wide. "It was so much fun living with you!"

He picked his pace back up to the rate it had been before her incessant questioning, and she skipped to keep up with him, while he aimed his eyes on the sidewalk ahead, the white concrete glowing yellow under the street lamps on their right. "Then there is no reason there should be a problem now, and it would be illogical for you to rent an apartment you will only leave again in several months, and then repeat this for the next three years. My living space is large enough for us both."

At his side, hand still tight in his, she hummed.

"Well, if you're sure—"

"I just said I was," he reminded her.

Her uncertain pout turned to that same impossibly wide grin. She bounced and swung their hands back and forth between them for several steps. He let his arm hang limp, but did not stop her from moving it.

"Okay, then! Great! This'll be so much fun! I mean, I know you're with me like all the time anyway, but now we don't have to go out for breakfast or use the dorm kitchen if we want to cook something together!" She paused, mouth wide open. She closed it with a blink, then bit her lip and turned to face him, though her eyes glanced away every few seconds. "Oh, uh … do you … should I … get a spare futon, or do you think the couch will be okay aga—"

"I thought we had already established this precedent in your dormitory room," he cut her off. "My futon is plenty large enough for both of us, and the sofa is far from conducive to a good night's sleep. I could hear you restless nearly every night last winter, and yet you refused to trade places. This will be far simpler."

She chewed on her lip, but her teeth loosened, and the corners of her mouth twitched up.

"If you really don't mi—"

"Woman."

"Okay, okay," she agreed with a giggle. She squeezed his hand, then leaned her head back to stare at the clear sky, dotted with more stars than he cared to count, and from the way she stared up at them he might have thought they had been painted there, scattered by a careless yet somehow deliberate hand, white paint on black canvas, light in the dark. She hummed. "So I guess I'll be taking longer shifts over the summer, since I won't have classes. Will you be okay going to the library, or around town, or …?"

"I have been content doing that for some time now."

She nodded. "I'm looking forward to it. Not, um, the longer shifts, though my job's pretty fun so I don't mind them, but us getting to live together. I mean, since you already spend so much time in my dorm room anyway … well, Zoe-san jokes that we should just move in together to save on costs."

She glanced away, chuckling, but his eyes followed her. "The idea seems logical."

The woman jerked her head back, eyes wide and blinking fast.

"W-what?" she spluttered. Her cheeks looked pinker even in the faint glow of the streetlights, but they turned that color so often he hardly knew what to make of it. Her hand in his twitched. "You mean, us living together … all the time?"

"What did you plan to do after you graduate?"

Her lips parted. Then she paused, face frozen even as she walked, caught in her own uncertainty. She closed her mouth again, lowered her head to stare at the sidewalk, lifted her shoulders, and let them drop.

"I … I don't know," she murmured. "I guess I hadn't thought of that much. At least not living arrangements. I mean, I'm fine staying in the dorm now, it's great getting to practice English with Zoe-san and have the whole 'dorm experience' people talk about and Zoe-san says we should probably get to still be roommates next year, but … after I graduate … would you really be okay with me living with you?"

"What gave you the idea I would not be?" he asked, just as she turned to meet his eyes in full.

She blinked. She held that same quiet, disbelieving expression he had become all too familiar with over the past year. But this time, it was brief. Her brow smoothed, her wide eyes returned to their regular size, and her lips curled into a smile that had all but engraved itself into the back of his mind.

"Good," she agreed with a tiny nod. "I think that'd be … nice."

He nodded, but said nothing in return. She didn't seem to mind.

She glanced to her side where her purse bounced against her hip, and a second later, her eyebrows rose and her bottom lip poked out.

"Hey, where's my …" she trailed off, brow scrunched together. She stuck one hand into the bag hanging over her shoulder, pulling open pockets even as she walked, before her pace finally slowed to a halt and she grunted in discontent. She dropped his hand. "One sec, Ulquiorra-kun, I think my wallet fell out of my purse."

He stopped, then peered into her bag, his free hand immediately stuffed into his other pocket. "How would it fall out if it were near the bottom?"

She hummed, not bothering to meet his eyes.

"Well, I sort of put it on the top when we left the store, so …"

She wormed her hand to the bottom of her purse, past her chapstick, handkerchief, cell phone, two small bouncing balls, and whatever else he hadn't seen there before, but found nothing. She withdrew her hand and looked back to him with a faint, sheepish smile and a nervous giggle.

He nodded toward the sidewalk in the direction they had come.

"Hurry and go find it. Such things tend to draw attention."

She straightened, eyes alight even in the faint glow of the closest streetlight. "Right! Okay, now where's …"

She started back in the direction he had motioned, and he stayed where he was, hands in his pockets, near the wall of a shop that stunk of the suffocating odor he now knew as cigarette smoke. Nonetheless, he remained, only the sound of his breathing and the clatter of her shoes on the concrete to break the silence.

With a glance toward her every few seconds as she worked her way down the sidewalk, he scanned the adjoining street. The town wasn't as bustling as the other cities he had heard of. He preferred that—less people to deal with. The sun had set before they even left for the grocery store, and now, clouds had floated in to cover the moon and most of the stars, leaving only the street lamps to illuminate the road. A car drove by every minute or so, and from time to time another person had passed them on the street, but at this time in the evening, most everyone seemed to be back in their homes. Despite her insistence that they go out tonight, the store had been out of the red bean paste she was so fond of, and he hadn't hesitated to voice his annoyance as they walked back through the florescent-lit building, and again in the checkout line when she stopped to buy a pack of gum on a whim—and apparently left her wallet sitting on the top of her purse. But now, with the streets almost abandoned, in the midst of a walk in the late spring air, just them, he no longer minded quite so much.

"Aha!" she burst. He turned just in time to see her scamper toward an alley, a couple of meters from the closest streetlight. A thin pink wallet lay on the ground near the wall, almost obscured by the shadows, and she ran toward it like she had found a pot of gold—or, in her case, a box of donuts.

It was only as she knelt down to grab it that he caught the shadowed form between the two buildings steps away.

A man slid out just as she stood back up—limited reiatsu, hard to sense, stubble on the face, black T-shirt torn around the edges—and clamped his large, grubby hand over her mouth. She jolted and shrieked, but his hand muffled it, the other reaching for her purse as she let the wallet drop, her eyes wide and body stiff as he leaned in toward her ear.

Instinct hit. Ulquiorra took one swift step toward her, hands slipped out of his pockets, eyes hard, face straight. No weapon, no way to get out of his gigai, but he did not need it. One hundred eighty-five centimeters tall, more than ninety kilograms, crude, messy, muscular but unsure.

_Strike._

As he took his second step, the man squeezed his hand tighter, voice hissing so loud even Ulquiorra could make it out.

"Okay, girlie, let's make this quick, I—"

The woman bit down on the hand and the man jerked back with a high-pitched yelp. She grabbed the hand near her waist and a fistful of his shirt, tensed her shoulders, and flung him over her head to slam into the concrete in front of him. He sprawled out on the sidewalk, a faint groan in his throat and his breath coming in huffs. He grasped for her ankle, but she slammed her foot down on his wrist until his voice caught in his throat, only a strangled squeal slipping out.

With practiced eyes, Ulquiorra watched her counter each one of his helpless movements as he tried in vain to fight back against his attempted victim. She panted, her face twisted in concentration, but all the time she remained calm and steady, as if she had trained years for this and now was just getting the chance to do it. Thirty seconds later, the man at last went still, and Inoue Orihime drew in several quick breaths, fists still clenched, feet spread at the ready, until she at last took in his limp, motionless form. She did not even turn when Ulquiorra walked the last few meters to stand beside her.

He stared down at the man, a dark bruise visible on his left wrist, his eyes closed and a groan echoing in his throat every ten seconds as his head bobbed from side to side, no longer with any hope of moving.

The woman huffed through her nose, poked out her bottom lip and creased her brow, standing tall and firm above the incapacitated attacker lying helpless on the concrete below.

She brushed off the front of her blouse and hunched her shoulders. She glanced up at Ulquiorra at last. Her eyes remained hard, and his mind flashed back to the dim-lit cell in Hueco Mundo, her hand connecting with his left cheek, his head snapping to the side despite the force he could have easily repelled, and him sliding his eyes back to find her panting, tense, determined, hand near her chest like she might slap him again if he dared speak while she still stood before him.

Then the tense exterior faded, and the woman sighed. Her shoulders went lax and her face smoothed out. The man groaned again, and she tilted her head.

"Well. Okay then," she murmured. She dug her hand into her purse and pulled out her pink cell phone, then flipped it open and fumbled with the keypad. "Um, I guess I'd better call 119 so they can come arrest him and make he's not hurt _too _bad and—Ulquiorra-kun, what are you—"

Before she could finish, Ulquiorra knelt in front of the man, braced his elbow against his leg with all his weight, grabbed his lower leg, and jerked it to the side.

The man shrieked for all of two seconds before his breath caught again, mouth wide open, tiny squeaks slipping past dry lips, eyes wide as he tried to catch a momentary gasp of air.

"Wah!"

Ulquiorra glanced up at her voice, then released the man's snapped leg and pushed himself to his feet. The woman's hands hovered in front of her, as if she might bring out her healing fairies, her eyes flicking from the man back to Ulquiorra. Her brow lifted to her hairline as she settled on him at last, her hands still in the air.

"U-Ulquiorra-kun, why'd you do … you didn't need to do that, he's already down!"

Even with her frantic movements, Ulquiorra kept his gaze on the man gasping for air below him, and allowed his brow a momentary thick crease before he smoothed it out again.

"Yes, but this way he will have to hobble in order to attack again, and I believe most humans are far less skilled with single-legged combat."

She opened her mouth, but paused. If there had been words in her throat, they disappeared then, and she was left in stunned silence, apparently with no way to say what was on her tongue. He turned to face her in full and tilted his head.

"I wasn't aware you were capable of offensive maneuvers, aside from the one who you attempted against Yammy."

She blinked. In the glow of the street lamp, he caught a faint pink tint to her cheeks. She glanced away, rubbed the back of her head and shrugged. "Well, uh, it's not much," she insisted. Her voice came out breathy, as if the exhilaration of it all had just now hit her. "I mean, it was nothing you would have seen in Hueco Mundo, since I knew I couldn't do much good fighting there. Tatsuki-chan's just taught me a few things over the years. She said I'm pretty good, though, about a first-degree black belt level! Almost second degree, since I still practice sometimes!"

She met his eyes again and smiled. Ulquiorra knew nothing of determinations of human strength, but nonetheless he held her gaze, calculating and intrigued.

"That man is nearly twice your weight, by my estimate."

She shrugged one shoulder, as if he had noted the man's shoe size. "… I guess so …" she muttered. Then she glanced down and jolted at the forgotten phone in her palm. She flipped it open again. "Oh! Right, I should call an ambulance! And the police …"

Ulquiorra let out a long breath that might have been a sigh, if he had been the type to do such things.

"Defeating an enemy, then trying to assist him," he noted with a faint shake of his head. "You humans never cease to baffle me."

"You really didn't need to break his knee, though," she insisted. Her voice changed then, from the shy nervousness to something firmer, like when she had told him to stop in her cell as he tried to convince her of the inevitable end of her friends. Her brow tensed, her gaze averted to her phone even while he kept his eyes on her.

"You cannot break a knee," he corrected with a glance at the leg bent badly out of shape while the man continued to groan, though his consciousness seemed to be fading. "You can tear the tendons so the chances of him walking properly again are unlikely, but there is no bone to break."

She sighed and shook her head. She pressed the last button on her keypad and didn't look up.

"Well … what you did. You … he was already hurt enough. And he didn't really hurt me or anything. He was just a … thug."

She brought the phone to her ear as the muffled ringing began. She flashed him a glance, and Ulquiorra's eyebrows lowered.

"He attacked you," he stated. "He chose his own fate."

Her steady breaths stopped, and she turned to look at him in full.

She stared, lips parted. Each tiny crease in her expression under the glow of the streetlight looked like it had been drawn in black paint, as if she herself was a painting, swaths of color amid a dark, empty canvas. Her eyes widened, her eyebrows lifted, the glisten in brown irises brighter than usual. He wondered if this was how she had looked at the Shinigami boy, when he stepped in to rescue her from Yammy, when he rushed toward her to recklessly fire his Getsuga against the two Arrancar girls without thought of the collateral, when the hole in his chest filled itself in and he pushed himself up from death for the third time that day. The one she always believed in, always hoped for, no matter how impossible the odds. The one she thought of as her hero, whose flaws she could never see, not even when hands turned to claws, face turned to mask, and voice turned to roar.

And as he remembered the look on her face, he realized he did not want this to be the same. It was different. There was no flawless hero come to rescue her now.

She did not need one. She could rescue herself.

But he did not regret the groaning man on the sidewalk beside him.

As she stared, though, he saw the brief moment of what might have been admiration flicker, as if thoughts she had forced back hit her again. Like she had been thrust back into reality. Her eyes flicked down to the man, and her lips pressed together so tight they almost disappeared into a line. Ulquiorra thought of speaking, but found nothing to say.

The phone clicked, and she gave the faint voice on the other end their location while Ulquiorra stood there in silence. It was ten minutes before the police arrived and took their statements, and other humans pulled the half-conscious man onto a stretcher and into the newly-arrived ambulance.

When he reached for her hand on the walk back to campus, she flinched away for a moment and flashed him a single, sharp, almost hurt look he could not comprehend. He watched her in silence, but she kept her eyes ahead. Just before she stepped into the dormitory, though, she stepped forward and hugged him brief and tight, then slipped inside without a word.

She did not mention it again, but he could not bring himself to forget.


	3. Florescent Magpies

**Pretty sure a Tanabata story is almost required for writing about a Japanese couple. Either that or I've just seen this done so many darn times and wanted to do it, too. XD****  
**

**I'm starting to think I should have just called this "the story where Ulquiorra does touching things by total accident." I promise, there _will _be more to it than that. I've actually managed to shock my desensitized seventeen-year-old brother with some of the more dramatic stuff I have planned. But for now, these two didn't get a canon happy ending. So I'm letting them have some joy.  
**

**Thank you to those who reviewed!**

_**3: Florescent Magpies  
**_

Orihime never really thought about whether he had ever worn a yukata before until it was time for him to try one on.

She tried—_really _tried—not to giggle when he picked at the fabric and shifted his arms in the oversized sleeves for the first five minutes after he pulled it on, his lips curved down, but she failed miserably, and the fact that he continued oblivious to the humor of it didn't help at all.

It had been a year since she had last taken out her old pink yukata with violet flower print, and while she once kept it hung in her closet in her old apartment, she now had to dig it out of the trunk Ulquiorra-kun kept for her, filled with the belongings that hadn't fit in her new dorm. It had been wrinkled, so she washed it and hung it up to dry while she dragged Ulquiorra-kun out to look for his own, a trip he insisted was useless since there was no dress code at the event and he could have just as easily worn his clothes from the day.

Some things, he just didn't get.

Even after they purchased it—the cheapest one of decent quality he could find, he seemed so careful with money—he remained reluctant to put it on, to the point that by the time he finally agreed, the sun had vanished beyond the horizon, the sky morphing from pink to gray to black, and she had to grab his sleeve and drag him out the door.

"Come on, Ulquiorra-kun, we'll be late!"

Despite her tugs, he walked at his usual pace. "You said this festival lasts for the entire evening, woman, I doubt we will be late."

She groaned, but chuckled, and tugged once more on his sleeve.

"Still, though, I want to show you everything I can!"

He picked up his step, but while she wanted to run, he walked. She slowed down a bit to accommodate, but her hand did not leave his sleeve, and she pulled so hard that she wondered if she might tear it.

"If this happens annually, I don't see why this one is so important."

"It's your first!" she countered with another laugh. "Of course it's important!"

From the blank face he sent back, she doubted he understood, but nonetheless, she smiled and dragged him along the roads.

She had only ever been to the festival in Karakura Town before now. The one Onii-chan had taken her to all her life, and the one she continued to visit even after his death. This festival looked a little smaller, but regardless, she squealed when it came into sight and tugged Ulquiorra-kun's hand the last hundred meters, stumbling twice, until they stepped inside the grassy field just off the sidewalk.

She held out her free arm in front of her.

"Welcome to the Tanabata Festival, Ulquiorra-kun!"

Ulquiorra-kun stared, the lights and colors of the booths lined up to either side of them a sharp contrast to the dark night sky above. Several people passed them, not quite bumping into Orihime's extended arm when they walked by, and the scents of the event wafted toward them with all their familiar intensity. He gave a faint, almost disdainful sniff.

"It is very … human."

She giggled.

"Uh-huh!"

She started through the crowds, his hand in hers, slower this time, and he followed in silent agreement. She looked around, and every few seconds she flicked her gaze to him and felt her lips twitch up, though he never looked back.

Dressed in a dark green yukata, standing among the bright yellow lights, the reds and the blues and the greens melded together in streamers and lanterns, the bustling flow of people back and forth, the smell of fresh takoyaki and yakisori and dozens of other scents sweet and savory and spicy, she could almost forget how strange this was. She could almost look down at his white hand and black nails and see another human hand, clasping her own as they slipped through the festival. The kind of human who would flash her smiles and laugh with her and dance for no reason at all and stuff his face with all the delicious foods sitting out until they were both about to burst.

But as that idea formed, something in her sank. She tried to imagine standing here with someone else, with someone who acted more like herself, who smiled and laughed and stuffed his face, and some of the thrill faded. It all felt ordinary. Just like every other couple that came to Tanabata, who had their own yearly traditions, who told and retold the story of the holiday in perfect synchrony.

This was different.

Ulquiorra-kun hadn't wanted to come, and he still didn't understand the point of going. And when he looked upon the colors of the lanterns and streamers, they reflected on his pale face like the sun on the dew-coated grass when it first rose over the horizon. As if he had never seen such a rainbow of colors before, of sights, of smells, of sounds. He gripped her hand as if she was his lifeline. She was the familiar. She got to show him everything, for the first time, like she was leading a centuries-old child out from a dark cave and into the light of day.

Something cold and wet brushed her cheek, and she paused. Ulquiorra-kun stopped at her side. She turned toward the sky and only just caught sight of the gray, black and blue tangle of clouds covering the stars before another drop hit her nose. Then another near her eye. Her shoulders fell.

"Oh no!"

More and more raindrops plopped onto her cheeks and yukata, and Ulquiorra-kun tilted his head. "What is it?"

"It's raining!" she wailed, and though several others shot her baffled glances as they passed, she paid them no mind.

Ulquiorra-kun motioned toward the rainbow-colored purse she had slung over her shoulder to carry money and her cell phone.

"There is an umbrella in your bag," he reminded her. "Remember, I put it there because you often forge—"

"No, but … this means Orihime and Hikoboshi can't meet tonight!"

He blinked. "… what?"

"The story. Of Tanabata," she tried again. He stared. Her lips twitched up as she glanced at the colors and lights around her. "I guess you didn't go last year so I didn't tell you. Orihime and Hikoboshi are lovers who can only meet once a year on Tanabata, where a flock of magpies make a bridge with their wings so they can be together. But if it rains, the magpies can't come, and they have to wait a whole year to be together again!"

She smiled wide, much like the five-year-old girl she had been in her earliest memories of the festival, Onii-chan guiding her to each booth with her tiny hand in his. But Ulquiorra-kun's blank face remained, and she felt her smile slip, like a balloon that had floated hundreds of meters up only to realize it had a rock tied to its string.

"It is only a story," he insisted, with the same impassive tone he had used to tell her all her friends would die, and later that she was going to die, too, that her attempts at empathy and self-comfort were useless. "These are not real people, I presume?"

She sighed. "Well, I guess not, it's just a legend, but …"

"Then that's what it is. Only a legend," he cut in when she trailed off. "It makes no difference. We'll take out the umbrella and you can visit the rest of the festival."

She looked at him in full, looked deep into those wide green eyes which had sparked faint interest even when he was the Arrancar threatening her in the Garganta. The specks of color in a being of black and white, as if to remind her, even if not himself, that there was a human beneath the mask. He stared back, and his face did not change.

Seconds later, she looked away.

"… yeah. I know."

He gave no response, and she already knew nothing she said would make any difference.

They visited the rest of the festival as planned. He held the umbrella while she played some of the games and bought them various snacks, though a number of booths had closed due to lack of preparation for the weather—or, as Ulquiorra-kun called it, "being exceedingly careless." She smiled, but her smile was weaker, and she had to force it onto her face anew each time it slipped. She hardly put any effort into getting him to try the snacks, but nonetheless, he had a bite of each of her dishes and gave his opinions before he insisted she eat the rest. She ignored the comment he made about her stomach being larger than most humans', given that they had already eaten a full dinner before they arrived and she still managed to scarf down three plates of food.

She had hardly noticed it before she met him. Perhaps those baffled remarks the other girls had made in high school about her thin figure despite how much she ate had had some validity after all.

They left earlier than she had intended, in part due to the steady rain and in part due to her dimmed spirits. The festival was closing anyway. The paper lanterns couldn't hold up against the water, and most people weren't too keen to stay without umbrellas. Only a few other visitors had thought to bring them. They started home in silence, while Ulquiorra-kun's umbrella kept their yukatas dry the whole walk there.

She slipped off her sandals and her socks at the genkan—the only part of her outfit which had gotten damp from the puddles—and stepped into the apartment, while Ulquiorra-kun shook the excess water from the umbrella onto the landing outside, pulled it closed, and shut the door before bothering to take off his own wet footwear. While she stayed in her yukata and only paused by the couch to take down her hair from its loose bun, Ulquiorra-kun slipped off into the bathroom, his day clothes slung over one arm. Minutes later he emerged wearing his "Pride" shirt—long-sleeved, even with the summer heat—and black pants, his dark green yukata rolled up and placed on top of the dresser near the wall. She started toward the TV as he passed her, pausing to snatch something off of the little table by the couch.

"I'm going to the store."

Orihime jolted and almost slid on the carpet despite her bare feet. She jerked her head to stare over her shoulder, where Ulquiorra-kun already stood next to his shoes at the door, his apartment key in one hand and the other in his pocket. She blinked.

"W-what?" she stammered. "You never go to the store."

"I am going now."

She waited for some sort of explanation, but seconds passed and none came. "Well, um, okay," she agreed with her best attempt at a smile. "You want me to come with you?"

"No."

"… okay," she murmured. Her smile twitched down, and this time she failed to lift it. She tried to push away the image of him in his uniform, standing in her doorway in Las Noches, blank and serious against her enthusiasm. She wrung her fingers together. "Can you … pick me up some more red bean paste? We're almost out."

"Very well."

He slipped on his shoes, picked up the wet umbrella, opened the door, and stepped outside. She listened to the click in the lock and his footsteps on the landing, but even when the sounds had vanished, she stood in the center of the room, chest heavy, head low, and smile long forgotten.

The grocery store was only a ten-minute walk from their apartment, and Ulquiorra-kun had long memorized the path to get there, but nonetheless, forty minutes passed before she heard the clacking of feet outside. She turned down the volume on the TV show she had only been half-paying attention to just in time for the door to open.

Once back inside, Ulquiorra-kun slipped off his shoes with practiced ease, a single, almost empty plastic bag dangling from one hand. She smiled, but before she could so much as open her mouth, he strode to the kitchen. She didn't even think to ask him whether he had found her red bean paste. She sat on her cushion on the floor, and it was another minute before she let her mouth close. Her head hung, and she wondered if perhaps she should have skipped Tanabata this year.

He returned from the kitchen minutes later and took his customary place on the small, cheap couch she had helped him pick out when he first moved in. He snatched a book from the nearby shelf—which stretched as tall as the ceiling, and dwarfed both the couch, dresser, and table in size, full to the brim with his literature collection—opened it with one graceful movement, and began to read.

Orihime stared at the TV, but did not really watch it. She imagined the other Orihime standing on one side of the river, waving in vain to Hikoboshi, forced to wait a year's time because the clouds had decided to roll in. It had happened once before that she remembered, when she was nine, and she broke down crying in the midst of the rain. Onii-chan had taken her to the ice cream shop and bought her a double cone, and told her that after all the time waiting, Orihime and Hikoboshi didn't mind so much to wait one more year. As long as they knew the other loved them, they would be alright. She sniffed and stared at her ice cream cone while it dripped onto her fingers, but then she licked some of the chocolate pistachio bubble gum combination off the back of her hand and smiled, and by the time they left, she was laughing while they raced through the rain to get back home.

She glanced at Ulquiorra-kun, then slid her eyes to Onii-chan's photograph, sitting on the dresser as it had been since she first moved here from the dorm. Onii-chan smiled at her, but Orihime found it very difficult to smile back.

It was nearly ten by the clock on the wall when she finally stood. She gathered the trash bags in the kitchen, already separated into two neat plastic sacks, and walked back to the front door to slide on her shoes.

She turned once again to the couch's single occupant. She chewed her lip.

"I'm taking the garbage out, I'll be right back."

He did not look up from the book in his hand, though she could have sworn he had read it before. "Hm."

She waited a moment in the genkan, floating on the low cloud of hope. But he never shot her a glance. Her fingers tensed around the garbage bags. Then she lifted them up, opened the door, and slipped outside.

She only just remembered to open the umbrella when she stepped out from under the awning. The rain had slowed to a sprinkle, scarce but heavy drops clattering on the roof every ten seconds. She almost slid on the wet metal stairs, but managed to get down to the asphalt below without injury. Rain splattered on the sleeve of her yukata when she tossed the bags into the dumpster, but she couldn't bring herself to mind. She would wash it later. She climbed the stairs with a bit more care, and she did not slide once. Under the awning again, she shook out the umbrella, closed it, and opened the door.

She jolted for the second time that night and only just stopped herself from stumbling over the genkan

Ulquiorra-kun stood in the center of the room, his clothes replaced by his white uniform and his large mask resting on the left side of his head, the Zanpakutou she had almost forgotten sheathed at his hip, while his false body lay stretched out in perfect posture on the couch across the room.

She blubbered.

"Wha—you're out of your gigai?"

He turned his head as if he had only just noticed she was there. His face looked blanker than usual, and somehow the sight of him in his old appearance made her breath catch. She wondered if it would have had the same effect if he spoken to her that evening, and she realized it had been so long since he had been out of his gigai that she didn't know the answer.

"Yes."

She blinked as she locked the door behind her and slid off her shoes. "Why?"

"That is none of your concern."

Orihime tensed.

He moved back toward his gigai on the couch and sank into it, a sight she had hardly had the chance to get used to. If she remembered correctly, he was only allowed to leave his gigai for five minutes at a time, and rarely, unless Urahara Kisuke had given them notice. Initially he had had to leave it more often for adjustments, so Soul Society had lessened the rules they placed on him, but they remained strict, and so far, Ulquiorra-kun had been careful enough not to break them. At the very least, she could see no reason he would risk it now.

Ulquiorra-kun sat up on the couch, rolled his shoulders as if getting used to a new piece of clothing, and picked up the book, and Orihime, fingers twitching, slid off to the bathroom to change into her pajamas. A bath had sounded nice earlier, but now, all she wanted to do was climb into bed and forget this entire evening, at least until she had some better memories with which to cover it up.

She brushed her teeth and rolled out the futon while he went through his evening routine. The small main room had never felt quite so silent, despite the pattering of the rain which seemed to pick up rhythm again. She tried not to turn her head when the bathroom door opened, but she couldn't stop her eyes from shifting to watch him step out in his loose black pajama pants and more fitted gray nightshirt, the same he wore every evening, his face blank and lips silent.

Her knees against the fabric of their comforter, she swallowed.

"Ulquiorra-kun, did I … do something to upset you?"

His eyes slid toward her, and she felt like a mouse, pressed into a corner. "No."

"… alright," she murmured, so quiet he might not have heard. She didn't think of repeating it.

She laid down under the covers on the edge of her pillow, staring at the ceiling. She caught Ulquiorra-kun in the corner of her eye as he paced toward the light switch near the door, slow and even movements, like a robot or a computer, and no matter how she reached out he did not seem to register her. The ache in her chest had almost started to feel familiar.

The lights flicked out.

Orihime's breath caught in her throat.

Instead of the pure, relentless black, she saw stars.

Florescent green stars, some big, some small, some so tiny they looked like dots. Scattered across the ceiling and all four walls, each a little prick of light against the dark. And spread across the ceiling, from one side to the other, were dozens upon dozens of stars gathered in a thick, weaving line.

A bridge.

A bridge on the wings of magpies, stretched across the night sky, even as the rain pounded on the roof outside.

The thought flicked through her head that it wasn't possible to put up all of those stars in the time it took her to take out the garbage. Then her heart skipped two beats. It would take a human half an hour, perhaps—but an Arrancar out of gigai, a practiced expert with sonido, even though he hadn't used it in months, could have done so with ease.

Footsteps padded across the floor in the dark, the rustling of the futon and the sheets as he climbed underneath the covers next to her, keeping his distance, but close enough so she could feel the hints of his warmth. At last she remembered to breathe, and the air rushed back into her lungs in a torrent.

"U-Ulquiorra-kun … it's …"

She turned to face him on the futon, and even the in faint light, she could make out the same impassive face. Even as tears brimmed behind her eyes, wet and warm, his eyes held hers, the familiar blank green that spoke more with a single glance than words could ever manage.

She drew a shuddering breath, shook her head, and looked back up to the ceiling. The stars glowed back at her, like little people waving from far away, the makeshift bridge like magpies flapping their wings and singing to her in the silence while the two lovers crossed the river to be together again. She breathed out, and the breath hitched as the tears dripped from her jaw.

"It's beautiful … I … I think they can be together now," she murmured, so quietly it might have been the wind outside.

She heard nothing at first but the quiet sound of his breath. He had always breathed quieter than she did, so that she stood out even when she didn't speak, while he melded into the wall and disappeared into the dark. But nonetheless, she felt his presence, warm and real and alive.

"Perhaps you will sleep properly, then, if it is satisfactory."

His voice remained stoic, but beneath it, she heard a hint of what might have been—if she wasn't imagining it—contentment. She breathed out, her chest light as if she might float away on a distant cloud, her smile so wide it ached, each breath like a tiny laugh from the joy that bubbled inside her. Under the stars, her eyes softened. Tears wet them and dripped onto her cheeks, then to a bit of the pillow beside her head.

"Yes. It is."

He gave no response. But she caught a faint hum from beside her, before the green eyes slid shut to the dark.

Without a word, she scooted closer against the smooth fabric of the futon, wrapped her arm around his back, and tugged him against her. She adjusted until her head almost fell off the top of the pillow, then touched her hand to the back of his head until his ear settled to the center of her chest. Her heart beat loud and steady, like a smile on its own, as she curled her arm around him in full while her other tucked itself between their forms.

Seconds passed in stillness. She breathed and felt his breath through the cloth of her nightshirt. Then, at last, one of his thin arms slid out from between them to slip over her waist. Loose at first, as if he wasn't sure how, then tighter, so that they felt like one person melded together, breathing as one, one heartbeat pulsing life into them both.

Orihime smiled until she fell asleep, the florescent stars igniting a pale green bridge above her head.

She never told Ulquiorra-kun she dreamed of being the weaving princess, waving to the pale-skinned, dark-haired prince across the river, and running to meet him, until she felt two thin arms encircle her and hold her against his new beating heart.


	4. Not be

**Thank you, reviewers (and to one particular anon reviewer I couldn't thank personally, I'm truly flattered!)! And to those who have favorited and followed! Glad to know this story seems to be enjoyed. :) I'm pretty sure the last chapter was in part inspired by the glow-in-the-dark stars I have covering my walls and ceiling. I'm twenty, not seven. I don't care. XD  
**

**Oh, and as for the point of view, it will jump back and forth between chapters depending on which POV seemed most interesting to explore for the particular topic. I may also skip anywhere from months to years between chapters, as this story will span decades and I simply can't write about _everything. _But I'll try to make it clear throughout the writing how old Orihime is (because Ulquiorra's age isn't really ... relevant, given his non-human status).**

**Hope you enjoy!**

_**4: Not be**_

"Okay, we're almost there. You ready?"

"Ready for what? You insisted I close my eyes, so I don't see how I would know what to be ready for," he reminded her. His tone sounded sharper in his ears, but her hands did not slip from his shoulders, and he kept his eyelids shut so that all he could make out was the faint glow of the florescent lights in the dormitory hall.

She stopped approximately nine seconds after they stepped out of the elevator. She turned him and lifted one hand, just long enough for him to hear the turn of the doorknob and the creak as it opened. Another light flicked on. Her hand returned to his shoulder, and she guided him inside, one step, two, and three, until she stopped once again inside the room. She paused, her hands sliding away, his shoulders almost empty without the pressure she had put on them since they had arrived back at the dormitory five minutes before.

"Okay … open!"

He did.

As he expected, he stood in her room, the two beds on the right, with several red and green and yellow balloons bouncing against the ceiling, streams of thin paper dangling down above the beds, and a large covered plastic dish sitting on the dresser by the opposite wall. The woman jumped to his side and held out her arms wide, her smile as bright as he had ever seen it.

"Happy birthday, Ulquiorra-kun!"

"Ah," he breathed as he looked around the room once more. "I suspected you might plan something again this year."

She huffed, shoulders dropped, bottom lip stuck out in the signature pout he had become far too accustomed to.

"Aw, come on, you're supposed to say 'wow!' or 'I'm so surprised!'"

"I am not surprised."

She opened her mouth, took a breath, but then let it shut. Her lips curved up into a small half-smile. She shrugged. "Ah, well, I guess there wasn't much chance in surprising you a second year in a row … anyway, come on!"

"Why are you so intent on this?" he asked, though he was sure he had asked the same question last year. "This date means nothing."

And again—as he was sure she had done before—she laughed and smiled, hair bouncing in front of her face, so much that he thought of suggesting once again that she trim her bangs.

"It means everything! It's your birthday! Without it, you wouldn't be here!"

His brow lowered.

"I fail to see how that is occasion to celebrate," he pointed out. "If I were never here, you would not miss me, because you would not know the difference."

Her high shoulders fell a bit. Her smile remained, but it softened as she clasped thin, peachy hands in front of her, her head tilted to the side. "I think I would."

He stared back at her for several seconds. Outside, the winter wind gusted against the window, and some of the other students chatted as they passed the dormitory. But in that room—void of even the woman's roommate, who had yet to return from her evening classes—there was only them, eyes locked in confusion and understanding that could not be put into words.

Ulquiorra flicked his eyes around the room again.

"What have you planned this time?"

She giggled and bounced onto one foot.

"Well, your present, of course! But first … _cake_!"

Before he could think of responding, she turned and skipped toward the dresser and the covered dish—which he could now assume was the cake—which sat near the edge. He closed the door behind them, but otherwise just stood and watched.

If he thought about it, he wasn't sure what exactly the date meant, or why it had been in his head, as if it had been filed away long ago until it was called for again. It was the same way he had known his name, despite never consciously inventing one or having one given to him. He doubted it had been his name as a human. Perhaps it had. He would never know. But for whatever reason, when she had asked him his birthday, he answered the first of December, and evidently, one's birthday meant far more to humans than it ever had to anyone in Hueco Mundo.

He still didn't see the point. But if she found meaning in it, if this made her happy, he saw no reason to protest. Even if it meant finding out for the second year in a row what "surprise ingredients" she had added to the cake this time, since, unlike most meals, he had been unable to supervise and keep her from throwing in half the food in the kitchen.

She lifted the lid from the dish, revealing the cake underneath, spread with smooth brown—he no longer dared to think it was only chocolate—frosting and piped with small green and white flowers around the edges. She might have been an excellent cake decorator, had she wanted to be. With the distance, he could just make out "Happy Birthday Ulquiorra-kun!" written in neat, cursive English letters in thin white frosting near the center, as well as candles placed near the edges. The other decorations were almost impossible to see, but he thought she had drawn a heart—or the symbol she always referred to as a heart, inaccurate as it was—instead of the dot of the exclamation point, and a few other pink "hearts" had been added in the empty space.

At the moment, he saw no unusual ingredients. But this was her. He could handle soy sauce, but if she had put bits of chopped leak in again, he might just have to find another way out of eating it.

She opened the top drawer of her dresser and pulled out a small, worn matchbox. Two fingers slipped in to remove a single match. She hummed.

"Wait a sec … okay …"

"Are you meant to light fires indoors?" he asked as she scratched the match across the box and a tiny flame struck on the top. She touched it to each of the four candles—he wasn't sure if the number was meant to be amusing or not—and glanced up at him between them. She waved her free hand and shook her head.

"Ah, it's just a little one, and you'll blow it out in a minute!" she insisted. She touched the flame to the last candle just as the match burned far too close to her fingertips. She huffed it out, dropped it in a small glass of water she had set nearby, then pushed the cake toward him on the dresser. He strode toward her in slow, even steps until he took on the other side.

She scampered to the door, flicked off the lights, and plunged the room into darkness broken only by the glow of the four candles. He squinted against them, but she just skipped back across the room, hands clasped behind her back, smile enunciated with the shadows and highlights cast over her face. She took a deep breath.

"Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear Ulquiorra-kun, happy birthday to you!"

Her voice was not unpleasant, but his head tilted as he watched her belt out the tune as if there was far more than one person listening. She burst into enthusiastic claps as soon as she finished, her smile unbroken.

When she met his eyes, his brow smoothed. "What is the purpose of the song?"

"Tradition!" she piped up after only a second's thought, fingertip pressed to her chin. She nodded toward the glowing cake, where several of the candles had begun to drip wax down their lengths. "Go on, make a wish and blow them out!"

He looked back toward her. "Wish?"

"Yeah!" She nodded several times with such enthusiasm her hair nearly got caught in the fire. "You get to wish on the candles!"

He lifted his brow, then lowered it again.

"That is ridiculous."

"Oh come on, just do it!" she whined, her pouting lip poked out again.

He glanced at the four lights again, which had begun to make his eyes ache, along with the smoke that rose close to his face. "Candles will not make a wish come true."

She huffed and nodded toward the cake nonetheless.

"C'mon, Ulquiorra-kun, the candles are starting to drip!"

He hesitated, silent. "What do I wish for?"

"Whatever you want!" she insisted, her pout replaced by a smile, so pronounced in the candles' glow. "Money! Fame! Adventures! Ooh, or a giant box of chocolate wasabi strawberries! But don't tell me! If you do it won't come true!"

Ulquiorra paused, eyes on the dresser below the cake.

Then he rounded his lips and blew one strong huff, tilting his head to hit each candle before the breath ran out. Each flame vanished, smoke billowing into the dark air, visible even in the faint light let in from between the closed blinds over the window.

The woman burst out into enthusiastic clapping, as if there were thousands of her instead of just one, standing in front of a cake smoking so much he wondered if the fire alarm wouldn't go off.

"Ooh, good job!" She scurried past him to the door, bumping into the bed before she reached the wall and flipped on the light. Ulquiorra blinked as the florescent bulbs blinded him. She grinned and bounced back across the floor. "Do you want some cake now or present first?"

"We just ate dinner."

"Present first, then!" she agreed. He watched her smile as she knelt next to her bed, the unchanged curve of her lips permanent yet genuine, as if it had been painted on. She could have erased it any time, but she let it be, like a ray of sun poking into a black cave. She stood just as he stepped up next to her, a decent-sized box, wrapped in green paper and a white ribbon in her hands, which she dropped on the bed. The mattress creaked under the weight, but she paid it no mind and smiled even wider. "Here you go!"

Ulquiorra glanced from the present and back to her, then finally tugged on one loop of the bow. It slid away with ease, and he laid it aside to slip one thin white finger beneath the paper where it had been taped, and tear it with a quick rip. He paused and looked up. She stared back, smile unwavering.

He tilted his head.

"What is it?"

She shook her head. "I don't know. I'm just happy."

"Why?"

She shrugged. Her lips twitched further up.

"You never tell me to stop anymore … when I call you Ulquiorra-kun."

He opened his mouth, but his brain hitched for a moment on the words, much like the pause of shock that had struck him in her cell all those years ago, when he sat up on her couch from his impromptu nap and heard her cheerful voice. The skin between his eyebrows creased and smoothed.

"Woman, you have called me that for the past year and a half and I haven't once protested. Why would you just bring that up now?"

She shrugged one shoulder, her hands clasped behind her back as she shifted her weight from foot to foot. "Well … I just realized it, I guess," she decided after what felt like a longer silence than he knew it was. She pressed her lips together. "I mean, you told me back in Las Noches not to call you that. Since that was how I would talk to humans. But now you don't seem to mind anymore."

His fingers hovered over the side of the box, not quite touching the broken paper, though he had far from forgotten that it was there.

"I am still not human."

"Yeah. I know," she agreed. While her smile had slipped, now it returned in full, and she lifted her eyes to meet his. It felt as if she could see past his gigai, past his mask and the hole in his chest, further than he could see himself, staring back to times he did not remember and to a person he did not remember being. Her eyes softened. "But you still let me. So … thank you."

She held his eyes with that same gentle, penetrating stare. He glanced to the side.

"You are truly pleased by such trivial things," he repeated, perhaps for the hundredth time since he had come here. She hummed.

"But that's a fun way to live, isn't it?" she suggested, like a small child standing at the window looking at the stars. "If you spend all your time waiting for the big stuff, then you'll be disappointed a lot. But if you're just looking for the little things that make you happy, then you can be happy all the time."

His head tilted, his time without his will. "Are you happy, then? All the time?"

She paused. Her hands clasped in front of her now, gentle, her fingers only just brushing her wrist.

"Well, I guess no one can be happy _all _the time," she answered at last. Then she nodded, slow and sure. She met his eyes and smiled. "But … yes. I'm happy. Here. Right now."

Ulquiorra searched her face, her eyes, her smile, for any sign of hesitance. Of lying. It was a skill he had picked up in Las Noches, where any interaction could mean life or death depending on the power of the person to whom he spoke. He had considerable immunity, being the fourth strongest of the Espada, Aizen-sama's favorite, and the one who followed the rules so strictly that there was no reason for him not to come out on top if any altercation came to his leader's attention. But he had learned to tell if someone was genuine, or if they were going to take out their sword and try to stab him in the neck as soon as he turned around.

She had been lying when she told him that her body and mind existed to serve Aizen-sama, but she had not hesitated. She spoke strong and certain, and though he had known without a doubt she did not mean it, her effort had impressed him.

But she wasn't lying now. Her smile and her eyes gleamed with all the enthusiasm they wore when she looked at her friends, the happiness she spoke of glowing like the pink on her cheeks.

She glanced away and nodded toward the box, where his finger still pressed against the edge of the torn paper.

"Go ahead. Open your present."

He waited, but she did not look back. He turned again to the box and pulled off the remaining paper with care. Last year she had tried to convince him to tear it off as quickly as he could, and he had informed her that such behavior was far more fitting of Grimmjow than him. She apparently agreed, or at least did not offer protest now.

Ulquiorra pushed the paper aside on the bed and turned to the gift beneath. Large and wide, perhaps eight centimeters thick, a pale pink cover decorated with the words "Memory Lane" printed in the same elegant English cursive as the cake, this time bordered with pale green. The rest held yellow doilies and drawings of blue flowers, all random and bright and striking, much like the giver standing to his side.

He met her eyes.

"A book."

"Sort of," she confirmed with a shrug and a giggle. Her smile threatened to burst from her cheeks, her weight shifted in eagerness. "It's a scrapbook."

He blinked. He might have heard the word before in one of the movies she so often had him watch, but he had never asked the definition. He kept his mouth shut, and she cleared her throat, her cheeks a brighter pink than normal.

"I kept trying to think of what to get you, especially since last year I was way too boring and just got you that green coat …" she started.

Once again, his head tilted. "The coat is useful."

"Well, _yeah, _but it's not a very _fun _gift," she countered. She nodded toward the apparent "scrapbook" lying in front of him on the bed. "So … I thought I'd make this. Open it."

He lowered his eyes. Then he took the thick pink cover in two fingers and lifted it away.

Within were large, glossy yellow pages. Some stickers in the shapes of flowers and stars and what the woman insisted were hearts adorned the edges, but on that first page, what caught his attention was the photo placed in the center. Of the two of them, sitting on a bench in one of the parks in Karakura Town, Inoue Orihime in a pink summer dress and him in the long-sleeved shirts he wore even when the weather was hot. She had turned to smile and wave at Kurosaki Ichigo walking toward them in the distance with a camera in hand, but Ulquiorra had only just noticed him, his brow creased the slightest in not-fully-formed irritation. But the boy snapped the photo nonetheless, then laughed and promised to send it to the woman the next chance he got. She had giggled for minutes after when Ulquiorra's face remained hard and disapproving, before Ulquiorra finally took her hand and led her back home.

He glanced up. The woman grinned.

"See?" She leaned over and turned the page, revealing two more large pages with two or three photos on each, all taken that same few months. She continued to turn them one by one, pausing only enough for him to recognize the moments in question, before she moved on, so that he felt like he was rushing back through time, skipping weeks at once as if in a bound. "I put in a bunch of pictures of us that we took since you got here. I didn't have a lot, since you don't seem to like having your picture made, but … I put all that I could find. Kurosaki-kun had some from the first summer you were here, and I got some from Zoe-san from last year. And there's a lot of empty space left. So we can take more pictures and fill it up."

She stopped ten pages in. Ulquiorra tilted his head. He lifted the next page, then several more at a time, estimating dozens upon dozens of pages left in the oversized pink scrapbook.

"… there is a lot of empty space."

She nodded and hummed.

"That's good," she noted, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. "We've got a lot of years to fill it up with."

He paused. She smiled, and he stared at her with eyes just a bit wider.

For a second—only a second—he was standing on that roof again. Turning to face her, knowing that he had no time left, that if he was to do anything, if he was to reach out for anyone, now would be the time. He had nothing to lose. He would risk nothing by trying just once. He didn't even know what he expected, if he thought that she would flinch away or even turn and run. He lifted his arm on instinct, reached his hand toward her, formed words he could barely hear and watched her lips answer him, though his ears had already begun to blow into the wind.

That hadn't mattered. He did not need to hear her words. Because he saw her hand lift away from her chest, not a hint of hesitation in her eyes. Just a moment of surprise, and then her hand reaching back, as if she had been waiting all this time for him to hold out his own.

He hadn't minded when his hand blew away into dust. He hadn't minded that that was the last thing he would ever see. He couldn't have thought of a better sight to end with than her peachy hand, contrasted against the gray sky, stretched to meet him. He knew then he would never get to hold her hand. He would never hear her speak, never see her face. It was all over. And for that second, he had all he needed.

And yet he had been pulled from the darkness, from the quiet nothing, to see the white ceiling of an apartment above him, and a woman sitting at his side, cinnamon hair falling over her shoulders and strands brushing her face, her eyes as wide as he had ever seen them. Changed. But still her. Always still her.

Now he didn't have just a moment. He had a lifetime.

A lifetime to clasp her hand in his, and a lifetime of images to engrave into his head and never, ever forget.

She clapped her hands together and grinned.

"Okay! Now cake!"

"I'm not hungry."

"Okay, I'll just cut you a little piece, then! You've got to try it, I made this one extra-special! The icing's chocolate-flavored red bean paste, but that was a little boring so I added some soy sauce in and that tasted _really _good, and for the cake, well, I went a totally new route for that, I started with—"

_I wish for her not to leave. To stay for eternity. It is impossible, but if she believes these candles will grant it, then that will be my wish._

_ For now, though, this is good enough._


	5. Sun in White

**Thanks for the reviews! :) Oh, and a certain sculpture here was highly inspired by a part of a post from "Bleach Lists." I do not claim credit for it (and you should totally check Bleach Lists out on tumblr). And yes, snow sculptures (not ice sculptures) are possible, just quite difficult, I assume.  
**

_**5: Sun in White**_

She squeezed his hand in her own, his skin warm even through both their gloves, and pulled him with all her might toward the front door of the dorm.

"Come on, come on!"

"Woman, the snow is not going anywhere," he protested.

"But it could melt soon!"

He breathed out, somehow calm even as she continued to drag him across the lobby, to the shock of the receptionist gawking at them from behind her desk. "It has been there two days already, I doubt it will melt in the next few minutes."

She chuckled and tugged again on his hand, and this time, he relented a step before he held back once more. "Yeah, but this is the _third _winter you've been here."

"And?"

"_And _every year you refuse to come play in the snow with me."

"I do not 'play,'" he noted, forming the word like he was getting used to a foreign language, or perhaps recounting Grimmjow's latest antics of trying to challenge Kurosaki-kun to a battle during visits from Hueco Mundo, even though Kurosaki-kun always managed to be in Soul Society when he arrived.

Orihime giggled and gave his hand one more tug. He walked at last, and she pushed open the door, the rush of cold air sending a single shiver up her spine before she grinned into the sharp chill and took a hesitant step through the doorway. Her boot crunched into the snow, and when she shifted and it didn't slide, she brought her second foot out and pulled Ulquiorra-kun along with her.

"Well, at least you're coming out here this time! Normally you just walk me to class and back and then insist on staying inside. Now you can finally really _experience _winter!"

The door dropped shut behind him, the hand not clasped in hers stuffed firmly in the pocket of his pale green coat. "I have experienced winter twice already," he pointed out. "It is cold. Sometimes frozen water particles fall from the sky and cover the ground in powder, and occasionally ice, causing numerous accidents among the careless students on this campus."

She shook her head, grinning all the time. "That's just the way you look at it. I look at it and I see how beautiful it is. I mean, _look_! Everything's covered in white! Isn't it gorgeous?"

She held out her free arm toward the campus and looked at it properly herself, despite having seen it plenty since it had first fallen. They had gotten at least fifteen centimeters, and though the snow was usually filled with footprints, today, early on a Saturday morning, the quiet of the night combined with the new layer of snow covered almost all of them. It looked like an expanse of shimmering white canvas, waiting to be painted on, the roofs of the buildings coated in thick white powder, glistening crystals hanging from the branches of trees, the benches nearly vanished underneath the blanket of snow.

Orihime turned to Ulquiorra-kun and found his eyes as blank as always, though he looked almost lost in something. As if he looked at the snow-coated campus and saw a desert, reaching out far beyond the horizon. Nothingness. Empty.

"I have seen plenty of white in my time," he answered at long last. "It is nothing new."

She sighed, shook her head, and smiled anew, though this time smaller and a bit sadder than before.

"It's totally new," she murmured. She held out her arm again, presenting a masterpiece to someone who had never seen it. "This isn't sand, Ulquiorra-kun. It's snow! And besides, now you have someone here to show you how to have fun. Now let's go!"

She let his hand fall from hers, and he slipped it back into his other pocket, as if she was the only reason he had taken it out in the first place—and she supposed she was. Her smile fell further, though she had seen the gesture hundreds of times before. But then it widened again, and she stepped further out into the snow even as Ulquiorra-kun remained where he was, crunching through the thick white powder, finding the closest section untouched by human feet.

She turned back around and clasped her hands together.

"First, snow angels!"

She waited as her voice hung in the silence, only the background chatter of students in the distance to break it. Ulquiorra-kun stared back, and for nearly ten seconds, he stood in perfect stillness. At last, he blinked.

"… what?"

She laughed. "See, watch!"

She spread her arms out to her sides, tested the softness of the snow beneath her feet, then let herself fall back, chilled air rushing against her until the snow crunched under her weight. She giggled again, and if she lifted her head, she could see Ulquiorra-kun take one step toward her, one hand lifted halfway out of his pocket.

"Did you slip, woman?"

Orihime shook her head as much as she could while lying down.

"No, that's what you're supposed to do!" she assured him. "Now I move my arms and legs back and forth and make an angel!"

She slid her limbs through the snow, the chill muffled through her thick garments, though a bit of the water seeped through the cloth and stung her skin. But she grinned and savored it, and seconds later put her hands on the ground.

"And … now I get up! Really carefully, though, so I don't mess it up."

She pushed herself to her feet with the technique she had perfected through years of experience. She jumped half a meter away from her shape in the snow, then turned around and beamed down at it.

"There! Isn't it pretty!"

Still the same distance away, hands tight in his pockets, Ulquiorra-kun stared at the form much like he assessed the other students who passed him by, the glance quick yet cutting, passing almost everyone off as no threat, and not worth his attention. He tilted his head.

"I fail to see how that resembles an 'angel.'"

"You just have to use your imagination a little!" she insisted with another faint giggle. She motioned toward the patch of snow just to the side of her own angel. "Now you make one!"

He paused. "No."

Orihime's brow tilted up near the center, eyes wide, bottom lip poked out just a tad.

"Aw, please?"

"No."

She huffed a long, heavy breath that clouded in front of her mouth, but she knew nothing would change his mind when he was deadset on something. At least for now. He had chastised Kurosaki-kun for being stubborn, but oftentimes he seemed just as bull-headed himself. She turned back toward the dorm nearby, as if the wall would give her some sort of inspiration. Seconds later, she grinned.

"Hey!" she broke out so suddenly Ulquiorra-kun almost looked surprised. She clapped her hands, the sound muffled through her gloves. "Let's build a snowman!"

"A what?"

He didn't sound quite as baffled as he had been with the snow angels, though she had a feeling that was just because he was getting used to so many new terms.

"A snowman!" she repeated, and this time she managed to keep herself from laughing. "It's … well, a man! Made out of snow! Well, actually, you just roll snow into three balls for the body, then sometimes you put a carrot for the nose and buttons or coal for the eyes and sticks for the arms and a top hat, if you can find one! It's really fun!"

Ulquiorra-kun blinked. "Is there a point to it?"

She nodded twice fast, smile wide as ever.

"Fun!"

He stared back in uncertain silence, and at last, she took a step to the side, where the snow was fresher, and motioned toward him.

"Here, how about I make the first one, and you watch, then we'll make one together!" When he gave no response, she knelt down and shaped her arms to pull the snow toward her in heaps. "Okay, to start …"

She couldn't remember the last time she built a snowman. She had built one at least once a year with Onii-chan—and usually snow-bunnies, snow-kitties, and snow-puppies, always in pairs, big brother and little sister—but her friends in high school didn't seem to have picked up her enthusiasm for it. Though to be honest, most of her winters in high school had passed under unusual circumstances. The first two of them had been after the Winter War and in peace time, she supposed, but no one had been in a proper state of mind then. She had moved forward, as had everyone, but somehow snowmen hadn't seemed like something that would come to mind.

But with the memories she pulled out from her childhood, she managed the three balls of snow, the large lump for the base, the smaller lump for the torso, and the smallest one for the head. She packed it as tight as she could and brushed off the excess, the frowned at the blank face for several seconds before she took one finger and drew in lots for eyes and a curved line for a smile. Then, lip poked out, she dotted in a small nose and giggled in success.

"Ulquiorra-kun, I'm do—"

She stopped, words hanging on her tongue and mouth wide open, as she turned to see Ulquiorra-kun several meters away.

Or, rather, his back. He bent over slightly in front of a pile of snow, which had already been smoothed and morphed near the bottom while his torso blocked her view of the top.

"Whoa …" she murmured. Then she grinned and took a step forward. "Are you making one, too? That doesn't look like a snowman …"

"It isn't."

She took another step. "Then what is it?"

He didn't bother to glance over his shoulder, but despite her third step, he did not move to allow her a better view.

"You will see when it's finished."

Orihime opened her mouth, but closed it a second later. She clasped her hands, which had gotten chilly even through the gloves with how much snow she handled, and after waiting for several minutes and not seeing him so much as turn around, she finally went back to her own snowman to round out the rougher edges and try to give Ulquiorra-kun a proper, "traditional" example so he at least knew what a snowman was supposed to look like, whether or not he was trying himself.

She didn't have a watch, so she had no idea how long he worked on his creation. After a while, she had smoothed out her snowman so much that it would have fallen apart if she touched it anymore, so she just stood nearby, shifting her weight from foot to foot, watching several other students laughing as they rode a makeshift sled near the other buildings, and some other residents in her dorm slipping out to join them. She and Ulquiorra-kun remained mostly alone, and if Ulquiorra-kun had noticed the others coming and going, he didn't look up. She resisted her constant impulses to sneak around him to see what he was making, her nose numb and her fingers still cold. She licked chapped lips and hummed every song she knew until, at last, Ulquiorra-kun straightened, brushed the excess snow off his gloves, and turned around to face her.

He said nothing, but Orihime beamed, bounded over to him, only just managing not to slide in the process, and stopped as soon as she stood in front of the completed work.

She stepped around the edges of the sculpture, half a meter away for safety, each movement as careful as she could make it. She gazed over the white form, snow packed together so tight that it glistened like ice under the faint sun in the pale gray sky. She stared at the crafted white chair, with cushions on the bottom and back, the back of it curved and tall. And on the chair, sat a woman, dressed in a gown that flowed to her feet, her hair let loose and hanging over her shoulders to splay over her chest and arms. She stared down at the sculpture's cupped hands, at her head tilted just to the side, her expression faint in the snow but still readable in the large carved eyes.

It was only then that she noticed the details. The sandal-like pattern on the boots, the dress that split near the center and pleated in hakama underneath the gown. The puffed sleeves over the shoulders, the rounded edges over the backs of the hands. The tiny flower-like pins in the hair.

And within the cupped hands, cradled as she smiled down at it with soft eyes, lay a perfectly formed heart.

"I still do not understand why you put so much meaning into that shape," Ulquiorra-kun broke in, and his voice made her jump from her silent reverie, thrown back into the reality of standing in the snow with the one who had made the object of her attention. She turned, and he stared at the sculpture with a hint of uncertainty and distaste. "It is highly inaccurate."

Her lips parted, chapped again, and she licked them before she turned back to the woman in the chair.

"Ulquiorra-kun … is that … me …?"

In the corner of her eye, he tilted his head. "Isn't that obvious?"

She took another step toward it, small and precise, so as not to chance ruining what he had made.

"It's … it's …"

She tried to find words to fit her thoughts, to fit the rush in her head and chest, but instead she just blubbered. Ulquiorra-kun lifted his brow. "Does it displease you?"

She shook her head so fast her hair flopped in front of her eyes, and even though strands from her bangs lingered on her numb cheeks, she didn't bother to brush them away. Her lips curled bit by bit into a grin that made her jaw ache, but she didn't mind at all.

"No! It's … _amazing_!" she cried. Her voice shattered the chilled silence like an ice pick, her warm, excited breaths huffing away the cold. "Ulquiorra-kun, this is … the most beautiful thing I've ever seen! I never knew you could _do _stuff like that! Did you practice with sand sculptures or something?"

"How would sand be shaped with no water?" he noted with the same impassive tone. His head tilted to the side, the sort of slight difference no one else noticed, but she managed to catch.

She breathed out again, still shaking her head.

"I guess so, but … wow. This is … stunning."

"It is not a snowman," he countered.

She giggled through her smile. "This is better."

"Yours is proper, at least by your instructions."

"Yeah, but … yours … there's nothing like it," she murmured, so quietly that it was barely more than a breath.

"Of course there isn't," he insisted, his brow creased in vague confusion. "There is only one you."

If he had been able to hear himself from her viewpoint, he might have understood why that made her eyes soften and her head tilt in wonder. But as it was, he stared with the same stoic uncertainty he so often did, the words, to him, just a statement of the truth, with none of the meaning behind it that rung in her head like the bells of the churches she saw on TV.

He still stared at her when she bent down half a minute later, her smile unchanged, scooped snow into her hand, rounded it into a ball, and chuckled it at the center of his chest.

It hit and crumpled to white powder, and Ulquiorra-kun looked down, blinked, then back up, his confusion tripled even with the minimal change in his face.

"What are you doing?"

She laughed, and almost felt a bit cruel for doing so when he genuinely didn't understand.

"Well, we have to have a snowball fight, silly!" she insisted with another laugh she couldn't hold back. She motioned toward the "snow-woman." "Just make sure not to hit your sculpture!"

The baffled tint to his eyes remained, but his brow lowered. "You wish to fight me?"

"Not a _real _fight. A snowball fight," she assured him. Nonetheless, though it was hard to tell, she thought his brow lowered further.

"I have no desire to harm you, woman."

"But it's not to hurt each other! It's just for fun!"

She kept her smile. His lips set.

"Your definition of 'fun' is beginning to sound like Grimmjow's."

"Come on, throw one at me!" she tried again. She waved her arms out to her sides and caught several other students staring at her in the distance, but didn't so much as flinch. "I'm wide open!"

"No."

She groaned and stuck out her bottom lip in her best imitation of what Onii-chan used to call the "face no being could resist." "_Please, _Ulquiorra-kun?"

He stared for a few seconds more in silence. He glanced down at the ground, breathed out slower than he normally would, then knelt down, scooped up some snow, and patted it into a perfect sphere as he stood back up. He looked at her, paused once again, then tossed it with the same utter casualness that he might have flicked a piece of dirt. The snowball hit her shoulder and shattered. Orihime laughed and cheered.

"There you go! You got me!"

"You are a stationary target," he noted.

Nonetheless, she laughed and motioned toward him, even while he stared with those calm, baffled eyes.

"Come on, keep going!"

She had probably never had a snowball fight with someone so skilled at combat in her life. But unlike fighting with Tatsuki-chan, Ulquiorra-kun never seemed to really try. His aim was excellent and he almost never missed—usually hitting her legs or her torso, and never her head—but each shot felt soft, even when she was close up, even when she was running and he should have needed plenty of force to hit her. When she had snowball fights with Tatsuki-chan, it was full-out war, and Tatsuki-chan never held back. She knew Orihime could hold her own, that she could take any hit she could throw at her, and also that her skull was as hard as they got, so head-butting her would be more dangerous for herself than Orihime. Orihime almost felt disappointed that Ulquiorra-kun wouldn't let loose.

Then again, she supposed she had no idea of exactly how much strength he had while in his gigai. He might have assumed that a snowball thrown at full force would still break a bone, or snap her leg in half, and for all she knew, it might. So she tried to give him the benefit of the doubt. And if she thought about it, the concept of fighting without really _fighting_—or even training for combat—probably didn't make much sense in that logical brain of his.

She really would have to introduce him to pillow fights sometime.

But despite it all, she laughed and panted and shouted as he threw his intentionally weak snowballs and she threw hers at full force, sometimes hitting him in the shoulder or the leg but most of the time flying straight past him into the air or a nearby wall. She could almost imagine them both far younger than they were, small children perhaps, chucking badly-formed snowballs at one another while Onii-chan smiled at them from afar, laughing and playing and not caring about what had been, or what would become.

In the mess of things, Ulquiorra-kun still had not put his guard up. And he apparently suspected so little of her that he didn't even tense when she giggled and jogged toward him, only to give him a quick shove to the chest and send him falling straight down into the patch of loose snow below.

His arms and legs sprawled out to his sides, and she couldn't help but let a giggle slip at his wide eyes, his brow creased just enough to show.

"Heehee, gotcha!" she cheered. She paused and leaned over him. "Oh, um, you didn't get hurt when you hit the snow, right? I remember that spot was really soft before …"

"I am fine," he assured her without lifting his head. His eyes slid to meet hers. "Why did you push me?"

She smiled again as if she had never stopped.

"You have to make a snow angel!"

He blinked. Then, his movements slow and exasperated, he turned to stare at the sky above him. Even with the gray clouds rolled in, the sun still reflected off each puff of white, so that the sky was an abyss of glowing blank.

"If I agree, will we go inside? Your entire face is red from staying out here so long."

Orihime beamed.

"Okay! I'll make us my special hot chocolate recipe! But snow angel first!"

He looked back to her, eyes hard and determined. People like Kurosaki-kun and Grimmjow waged battles with their fists and swords, argued with loud voices, but for Ulquiorra-kun, this was the epitome of his resistance. He didn't glare—she didn't think she had ever seen him truly glare at her, unless those tense, slicing stares in Las Noches counted, which she didn't think they did—but he kept his eyes firm, as if expecting her to back down. Orihime stood tall, her smile still obvious but her feet spread far enough apart to hold her ground. She hardly took the time to blink.

At last, he began to move his arms and legs back and forth. The movements were far from as wide as she would have liked them, but they smoothed out the snow near his limbs and shaped an angel around him. She beamed and clapped as soon as he stopped.

"There you go!" she cheered. "Okay, I'll help you up …"

She leaned over him as far as she could without falling over, hand outstretched, after a pause, he pulled himself up—the white powder clinging to his black hair like crystals—and took it. She tugged, but he managed most of the feat by himself, still impossibly graceful even with the false body he had once, years ago, described as bulky and cumbersome.

He brushed himself off and took two steps back toward the dormitory.

"Now we're going inside."

"Oh! Look, Ulquiorra-kun!" she squealed, grabbing his wrist. She bounced on numb toes and pointed. "Our snow angels are holding hands!"

He paused. Just for a second, before he turned his head to face where her finger showed.

The two shapes engraved into the white powder looked almost identical, one a little taller than the other, the shorter with the arms and legs spread out wider. But indeed, the tips of the hands just touched, as if grasping fingers in the midst of a winter storm.

His face changed, slight, imperceptible, and drastically, though in what way she did not know.

"Yes," he whispered, like a realization bursting out from within.

Ulquiorra-kun turned to face her, and she giggled and tugged on his hand as they started toward the front door of the dorm.

"Come on, let's go inside! I'll get my camera as soon as we're a little warmer and take a picture of your sculpture, 'cause it's _amazing._ But right now I'm freezing, how about you?"

"I told you it wasn't a good idea to go outside in this weather."

"But I had so much fun!"

Her fingers had gone numb, and once inside, Ulquiorra-kun touched her ears and compared them to pieces of ice, but nonetheless, she dug out her digital camera and went outside to snap more than twenty pictures of his creation from all different angles. She might have taken more had he not grabbed her arm and dragged her inside again.

Zoe-san came back from her day out with her friends two hours later to find their coats, gloves and hats discarded on the floor, the two of them huddled together on the edge of the bed while a movie played on the TV, every blanket on her bed ripped off and wrapped around them.

She didn't stop laughing for five minutes, but Orihime just laughed along with her, and Ulquiorra-kun stayed by her side, not saying a thing.


	6. Mirage

_**6: Mirage**_

The woman took five seconds longer than usual to open the door for a Saturday morning, though he came at the same time he always did, and when she poked her head out, her eyes were lined with gray, eyelids drooping, cheeks flushed and the rest of her face pale, and small beads of sweat dripped from her forehead.

In a motion so slight only she would have noticed, he frowned. For the first time, even she did not seem to catch it.

"Woman, what is wrong?"

She groaned, looked down, and rubbed one eye, her opposite eyebrow tilted in the guilty expression he was far too accustomed to. "Sorry, Ulquiorra-kun … I'm sick," she murmured. Her voice cracked on the last words.

She met his eyes again, blinking twice, and he lowered his brow.

"Is this another excuse to try to surprise me with a gift?"

The woman squinted, then blinked again fast and shook her head. She flinched at the sudden motion and put a hand to her temple, and only then did he notice that her hairline had dampened with the sweat on her face.

"No, no, it's real this time," she insisted, her enthusiasm weakened. His fingers tightened in his pockets, even as her already-low shoulders sank in apparent disappointment. "Sorry I can't come out, I wish I could, but—"

She jolted forward in a sudden sneeze, only jerking her elbow up just in time to cover her mouth and nose. He stayed in the doorway, though he had seen other humans jerk back. She sniffed, coughed, and forced a small, apologetic smile onto her face as she shook her head again, slower this time.

"Sorry. I'll see you tomorrow, okay?"

She started to close the door, but he leaned in and stuck his hand on the doorframe. She jumped, hand yanked from the doorknob, and he took the chance to peer in behind to her to the empty room.

"Where is your roommate?"

The woman glanced behind her, as if she had forgotten herself. "She's staying with some friends for the weekend."

He flicked his eyes over her flushed cheeks, the circles around her eyes, the sweat on her face. His shoulders tensed. "Then I will stay here."

Again, she jumped, this time almost so hard she fell back.

"W-what?" she stuttered. She shook her head fast again, and though he saw her brow crease from the pain, she hardly slowed. "No, you can't! You'll get sick!"

"Then I will get sick. You will not stay here by yourself."

"But I …" she started, and trailed off a second later as he pulled a hand from his pocket.

Her lips remained parted as he laid his white palm over her clammy forehead.

"You are very warm," he noted seconds later. She just stared, and only then did he notice how glassy her eyes looked. He pulled his hand back, wiped the sweat off on his black pants, and slipped it into his pocket. "Humans aren't meant to be this warm."

She hummed and turned her face toward the floor. "… no, that's a fever …"

He slipped further into the room, and she stumbled back and just managed to catch herself before she tumbled into the floor. When she looked up at last, he nodded toward her bed near the window.

"Go lay down. I will bring ice."

She bit her lip. "… you really don't—"

His eyes hardened. She held his gaze for several seconds, but after that, her exhaustion won out, and she stared at her feet.

"Okay …"

She trudged across the room and more collapsed into the bed than slid into it. She neglected to even pull down the covers, so he pulled them out from under her, folded the quilt near the foot of the bed, then laid only the thin sheet over her. He opened the curtains to let more of the outside cold in through the glass, but left the window closed, at least for now.

He brought a bowl of ice water from the kitchen down the hall, as well as several washcloths he dug out of her dresser. By the time he dipped the first one in, her breathing had evened out, and she was so far gone that she didn't even react when he wiped the cold, wet cloth over her forehead, squeezed it out into the bowl, then laid it, still damp, against her head.

Ulquiorra replaced the cloth several more times until the ice had melted, then left long enough to refill the bowl with fresh cold water and dampen the cloth again. He only glanced at the clock on occasion, and even when he did, he paid it no mind. He didn't bother to get lunch for himself, as most of the "food" in the vending machines was far too unhealthy for him to actually consider it worth eating, and the brief hunger pains his gigai emitted were gone after a while. He sat on her roommate's bed and watched her in between the changes of the cloth, and once late afternoon had hit, he realized that the cloth did little good. Her fever did not seem high enough to cause her harm, she hadn't come any closer to waking than mumbling in her sleep, and the ice machine down the hall was actually beginning to run low. So he just took his place on the edge of the bed, hands in his lap, his eyes on the opposite wall and his mind on whether he should find any of the other dormitory residents and ask if there was anything else he should be doing.

"… mm …"

His head jerked up at the faint hum and whimper. Her eyes remained closed, her body turned on her side toward him. But now her arms had begun to tremble, her forehead wrinkled and brow creased. Her lips pressed together while her eyes squeezed shut. One hand gripped the pillowcase next to her head, and just as his eyes settled on her, she whimpered again, louder this time. Ulquiorra stood, shoulders squared and hands hovering in the air with an uncertainty he did not enjoy.

After spending two summers and two winter breaks sharing an apartment, and many nights in between where her roommate was gone and he stayed with her, it was inevitable that he would witness a nightmare now and then. It was rare, and he had once wondered if the fact that they often slept in close contact helped. He wondered if her nightmares had been greater before he came. Or perhaps they hadn't occurred at all, and his presence had worsened what was once not a problem.

She whimpered again, and seconds later, a bright light flashed near the center of her chest.

He blinked. The glow centered, then split into six pieces which rushed into the air above her. The light faded seconds later, and Ulquiorra leaned in to peer at the creatures—yes, they were tiny _creatures_, with faces and hands and enlarged feet, as well as strangely-shaped wings—floating near the bed.

Six of them. By the looks of them, four males and two females.

But before he could peer closer at each, one of them—a red and black fairy with a pale cloth tied over his nose and mouth—jerked his head to face him, tiny eyes fuming and fists clenched.

"Who the hell are you?!"

"Tsubaki, be nice!" another fairy cut in before Ulquiorra could think of responding, this one with a pale high ponytail and a red shirt. The fairy turned and flashed Ulquiorra a quick smile that reminded him far too much of the woman's, before he turned back to "Tsubaki" and attempted a gentle look. "That's Ulquiorra-san, remember?"

Tsubaki huffed in obvious sarcasm. "Oh, yeah, I remember! _You_!"

Ulquiorra blinked. After the loud fairy stayed silent for several seconds, he ran his eyes over each of them in turn. The two quieter males, one pale and skinny and the other practically obese, stared back at him, while one female hid further beneath her kimono and the other grinned and waved. Then his gaze slid down to the woman asleep on the bed, and to the spot on her blouse where her hairpins were always clipped. But instead of flowers, all he found were the straight edges, clinging to the collar of her shirt. He looked back up.

"You are …"

He trailed off as if in question, and the fairy with the ponytail chuckled, his smile as friendly as if he hadn't been scolding his comrade less than a minute before.

"Nice to meet you, Ulquiorra-san! We're Orihime's Shun Shun Rikka! These are our true forms. My name is Shun'o, and this grumpy guy here is Tsubaki."

"Oi!" Tsubaki shot back when Shun'o nodded toward him, his fists clenched and eyes like daggers.

"Tsubaki, please let me finish!" the red-clad fairy insisted with his hands on his hips. He turned back to Ulquiorra with a grin and motioned in turn to each of the other fairies hovering nearby. "This is Ayame—don't worry, she's a little shy—and Hinagiku and Baigon—"

"And I'm Lily!" the pink-haired one burst, hands clasped in front of her blue leotard and a smile stretched wide across her face.

Shun'o chuckled. "That's Lily."

Ulquiorra glanced over them all one more time, mouth straight and eyed hard.

"Why have you come out?" he asked. "Are you going to heal her?"

The smile on Shun'o's face slipped. He glanced down and shook his head, the high ponytail bobbing, much like the woman's hair flopped when she skipped down the street. "We can't heal her unless she calls on us. We might be able to heal illness if she asked us, but we've never really tried before … she doesn't usually use her powers on herself."

"Why?"

Shun'o paused. He hovered in the air, wings still, and Ulquiorra wondered if he even needed them. He didn't truly need his own wings in his Resurreccion either, of course. But they were there, and while he could fly whenever he wanted, with those wings he could glide through the air with no effort, catch a current of wind and ride it as far as he liked. At last, Shun'o shrugged.

"I think … she thinks they're just to help other people," he suggested. He pushed a smile back onto his face, a smaller one, sadder, and looked back up. "But that's not right. We're the Six Princess-Shielding Flowers! We're here to protect her, first and foremost, and anyone else she wants."

The enthusiastic one—Lily—glided toward Shun'o near the bed. "But we thought she seemed kind of out of it, so we came out to check, and … well, she looks pretty sick."

Ulquiorra's shoulders dropped, and he only then realized how tense they had become. "Yes," he murmured as his eyes slid to watch her, speaking more to himself than to the six fairies that surrounded him.

"And _you're _the one taking care of her?" Tsubaki asked, eyes wide with near-disbelief. He snorted. "You gotta be kidding!"

Ulquiorra inclined his head, but more like when he was offering a threat than offering respect. "Her roommate is away for the weekend, so yes, I will be caring for her."

Through the cloth over his face, Ulquiorra thought he saw Tsubaki's mouth open to offer a retort.

But he stopped at a whimper from the bed, and all seven occupants of the room jerked their heads to face it.

The woman's tension had not decreased since her fairies had emerged. If anything, it had grown. He wondered if she would give herself wrinkles from how hard she scrunched her forehead. She mumbled something under her breath, and he leaned in a bit to hear them, the six fairies hovering far closer to the bed. Her voice sounded distant, words he could barely make out, mixed in with incomprehensible mutters and shuddering breaths.

"Don't hurt them … pl'se don't hurt them … I'll go with you … I'll go …"

Ulquiorra looked down at her for several seconds after her faint words turned to mumbles and whimpers again. He stared at her face and felt the sunlit room turn to the shadows of the Dangai, the ancient bones crunching under his feet, her face alternatively determined, fearless and terrified as he spoke. Though the organ in his gigai continued to beat, he almost felt as if it had vanished, and with each breath she took, the air blew through the gaping hole in his chest to the other side, pronouncing the emptiness that could never be filled.

In the corner of his eye, Tsubaki hummed and crossed his arms. Ulquiorra turned his head in time to see him point toward the bed.

"You hear that, don't you?" he asked, no hesitance in his voice. "You get it? She's talking about _you_, y'know. You're her nightmare."

Shun'o's pleasant face scrunched up. "Tsubaki!"

"Why?" Ulquiorra cut in, his tone as quiet as a breath, before the fairy could respond with whatever retort he had on his lips.

Tsubaki looked back to Ulquiorra, eyes hard.

"Because, _Espada, _as soon as you take off that gigai, you're exactly the same! You still wear Aizen's uniform, you still have that mask and a hole through your freakin' chest, and you still have that same tattoo marking you for _exactly what you are_! No matter what that woman says, you'll always be the same Hollow that kidnapped her, who almost got her killed!"

"Tsubaki, stop it!" Shun'o shouted, though far from the volume of the other fairy's voice.

"It's true, _Shun'o, _don't try to deny it!" Tsubaki countered in a tone twice as loud. He pointed one tiny finger toward Ulquiorra. "This guy comes back here because _she _decides to have you and Ayame bring him back, and now he thinks he can just be right at home, even after all he did to her! Does he think we've forgotten? Does he think _she's _forgotten? She remembers, even if it's just when she's asleep. And nothing you do will change that, Espada."

"… Kuro … wait …"

Ulquiorra jerked his head back toward the bed, and if the fiery male had anything else to say, it was cut off. They all stared at the woman curled underneath the single sheet. Her shoulders had tensed further, so much that Ulquiorra wondered how her human muscles could handle being so stiff. She pressed her lips together as if biting the inside of them. He took a step toward her, his own shoulders tense as well, and strained his ears for her voice murmuring under her breath.

She huffed a shuddering breath and shook her head, scrunching her hair against the fabric of the pillow.

"Wait, Kurosaki-kun … wait… stop … don't …"

His eyebrows rose. His breath caught for a second before he forced another one in. Though he heard only whispers, those whispers sounded like cries, breaking through everything else, through the terror, through the quiet, through the rage and merciless battle under the gray constant moon.

The screams. Forcing himself up with one regenerated arm, the rushing sounds of the growing Cero, and the screaming. The voice he had grown so used to in only two days of hearing it. Crying out. Crying out for the one who had come to save her, who was ready to kill her friend.

Luz de la Luna formed in his hand. One blast of Sonido to throw himself in the air.

The slice. The gasp. The blast.

Then the mask shattered, the Cero dispelled on its owner.

Though the cloth covered the lower half of his face, Ulquiorra imagined Tsubaki's small lips parted. Hinagiku and Baigon hovered near him, while Lily floated closer to Ulquiorra by the bed. Her face seemed quieter than before, solemn and gentle.

"There are … Orihime-san has a lot of bad memories," she began, her apparently usual enthusiasm dimmed, but just as genuine. She reminded him startlingly of the woman as she looked down at her hands, then smiled, almost sadly, back up at him. "She won't talk about it much, because she doesn't want to make anyone else sad. Or herself, because it hurts to remember. And almost everyone she knows has caused her pain at some point. Some were little. Some were big. But she still cares about them. The past doesn't matter anymore. What matters is what you do now."

She stared at Ulquiorra even as he remained silent. To the side, Tsubaki huffed, but he made no retort. Shun'o glided over and put a small hand against Ulquiorra's shoulder. He knew there was no reason he shouldn't have been able to feel it, but regardless it struck him on some level that he could.

The small male fairy smiled.

"We're just a part of her soul. We can only do so much." He patted his hand, the tiny touch noticeable even through Ulquiorra's shirt. The fairy glanced to the woman lying on the bed. "But you … you're different from her. You'll always be different from her. But that's why you can help."

Another whimper turned Ulquiorra's head. The sweat from the woman's face had nearly drenched the section of the pillow where she had rested her head, and her grip on the pillow tightened so much that her knuckles had begun to go white. Like his. Only that was how he always was. He was blank. She was color.

"She is still distressed," he murmured with only a brief glance to Shun'o hovering at his side.

When he turned back at last, the fairy's smile remained, but his face hardened, eyes deep, hand on his shoulder a stronger weight than his size could have allowed.

"Then do something."

Ulquiorra stared into the fairy's eyes like he had stared into the woman's countless times over the past years. For a moment, he almost thought those were her eyes, determined, reassuring, irrational, yet which somehow made more sense than anything in the world.

He breathed, eyes shifting toward the woman near his side, and Shun'o nodded without a word.

Ulquiorra slid onto the bed next to her, his back pressed against the wall behind her bed. She did not seem to notice, her face still tense as sweat dripped from her forehead and into her already-dampened hair. Her breath huffed so that he could almost feel it against his wrist, and her hand clenched the cloth of the pillow as if squeezing it might make all the fear go away.

Slower than he thought was possible, he slipped his arm underneath her shoulders and lifted her body toward him. She hummed, but did not wake. He balanced her against his elbow and laid her head down so her ear rested against the center of his chest. Then he wrapped his arm around her back and stomach to hold her in place. The wall felt cold through his shirt, a sharp contrast to the heat of her flesh and the sweat that now slid onto his own clothes, so that he would likely have to change out of them as soon as he went home. He didn't care. He held her close and secure, but gentle, the sheet falling down to her knees and her fairies hovering not a meter away, the little red and black one with arms crossed, but the rest of them with wide, interested eyes and baited breath.

Seconds drew on like eternity, but then, he saw her breathing slow. It deepened, from the shallow huffs to genuine breaths , her chest lifted up and down, slow and even. The crease between her eyebrows lessened, her grip on the pillowcase—which had since transferred to his shirt—loosened, and the tense form he had laid against himself relaxed until all he felt was a limp, sleeping, excessively warm human pressed against his chest.

Her murmurs stopped. The beads of sweat on her forehead remained, but seemed to cool, as if the very release of tension had been enough to bring her temperature down.

His hand moved of its own will, like when he had lifted his arm toward her on the roof, a reflex, a final gesture he did not understand but which he knew he had to do. He watched the white flesh rest against her slightly wet cinnamon hair, near her scalp, then stroke down until he reached the ends. He returned the hand to the top of her head and continued, up to down and back again, the motions careful and soft, like she had done for him every night they shared a bed. His ear resting against her beating heart, the even thudding in his head, the warm flesh through cloth against the side of his face, and the thin fingers stroking through his hair and against his scalp.

Real. A constant, never-ending proof of where he was.

And who he was with.

That was how he had fallen asleep all those nights before. And with those same motions, her tension calmed, and when he looked up, even the red and black fairy stared down at him with raised brow, crossed arms loosened, while the rest of them smiled. Then, with a flash of light, they returned to her hairpins, and with a frustrated glance to the side, the red and black one followed. The small blue flowers reappeared on her blouse, as ordinary as they had looked when he first saw them in her hair years ago.

He looked down at the woman held against him, his hand still moving over her hair in a mimicked, familiar pattern. As she breathed against him, calm, secure, he slowed the strokes of his hand and committed the feel of the strands against his palm to the depths of his memory, where her face had long engraved itself, and her laugh, and her smile. Most of his life's memories were white and black, and the only streaks of color were bright crimson, blood painted with a cruel, thoughtless hand, the blood of others and himself which remained long after the scars disappeared. He never minded them. He hardly noticed them. But she was different. She was the rainbow she so often pointed out after a storm, the palette of every color he could picture, all circling around a swath of cinnamon painted in constant streaks that covered up the gray.

He didn't know when he let his eyelids shut, when the darkness faded to nothing. The last thing he felt was his hand settled within cinnamon strands, breathing in his ears, and a very real heartbeat thudding against his stomach to match the false one in his chest.

Ulquiorra woke the next morning, both their clothes wrinkled and drenched in sweat, her hair a damp, tangled mess, but her still asleep against his chest, his arms around her as she breathed in and out.

He stayed until she woke an hour later, eyes half open, smiling up at him, the sight as strange and confusing and wrong and right as it had ever been. She hummed, leaned up to kiss his cheek, and despite his protests, climbed out of bed to get changed.

When he checked, he found her fever almost gone, but he still kept her inside the rest of the day, playing movies he did not understand and watching her laugh and smile in the corner of his eye. By some miracle—according to her—he did not find himself sick. But her roommate returned that night sniffling, and spent the next two days cooped up in bed.

The woman came by between each of her classes to check on her, and Ulquiorra just stood in the corner, hands in pockets, head tilted, and marveled at the reality of it all as her hairpins pinned to her blouse glinted in the light of the sun.


	7. Despair in White

_**7: Despair in White  
**_

He showed up outside her dormitory with no particularly awareness of the calendar. He only bothered with what mattered, and what mattered was that it was Wednesday, and Inoue Orihime's classes began at nine in the morning, meaning he met her twenty minutes earlier, just as he did three days every week.

She bounded out the door approximately two minutes later with panting breaths, bright and far more awake than he had expected. He straightened.

"Wo—"

"Ulquiorra-kun!" she cut him off, her voice so high from giddiness he almost couldn't make it out. She giggled and squealed, fists clenched and smile almost disturbingly wide. "You'll never believe what Ishida-kun sent me for White Day!"

He blinked. "Oh?"

She nodded so fast her hair flopped over her face,.

"Yeah! He sent it in the mail since he was really busy with his own schoolwork, and I just found it when I checked at the front desk, and it's _amazing_! It's a dress!"

"… he has given you dresses two years prior, has he not?"

"Well, yes, but this one is just _great_!" she insisted. "His skill is really improving, and he's already such a good sewer I didn't think that was even possible!"

He took her hand even as she clenched it, and she offered no protest when he started toward her class building. She swung both their arms back and forth through the air as his hung limp, his steps even while hers almost skipped.

"Oh, and I got gifts from Sado-kun and Kurosaki-kun, too! Sado-kun got me this really cute stuffed puppy, and Kurosaki-kun got me a necklace! With a little flower at the end! He says he found it in Soul Society, isn't that cool?"

"As he spends most of his time in Soul Society, that is not surprising," Ulquiorra noted.

She hummed.

"Yeah, he hasn't been here much ever since they named him captain. Oh! That reminds me, I still need to go there and meet his division! I mean, I _have _met them, but not since he was captain! It'll be great! It's been forever since I've been there, and Kuchiki-san and Renji-kun don't come here much, even less than Kurosaki-kun, so it'd be a fun trip, and you can come along, too, if you want!"

"I believe I will be fine here."

She rambled the whole rest of the way to her class, and likely would have kept on talking until she had to go inside had one of her classmates not shown up and pulled her in. From what Ulquiorra could hear, they only continued their discussion of the holiday and the gifts they had received once they were inside, giggling and chattering until the professor slipped in. The classroom went silent, and Ulquiorra took his usual place on the bench by the wall, this time not even bothering to take out one of his library books. He leaned his head against the wall, mindless of the chill, and stared at the ceiling.

The first year he had lived in the human world, no one bothered to tell him what White Day was. He found out through observation at first, and soon after from the woman's ramblings about who got her what gift and how excited she was. She never mentioned it to him, nor seemed the least bit offended that he hadn't gotten her a gift himself. It had left him vaguely frustrated to not understand, but he let it go, filing the date away in the back of his head to remember next year.

When March came around, Ishida Uryuu came to visit, and Ulquiorra took the first opportunity when the woman was away to grab the Quincy by his shirt sleeve, tug him to the side, and demand to know the significance of "White Day," as it were.

The Quincy blinked at him and held the same look he often did, the one of distrust and vague disdain which remained even after the two had begun communicating on remotely civil terms. But it had not lasted long. The expression changed to something almost smug, no matter how much the boy tried to hide it, and the whole time he explained the concept of "return gifts" for Valentine's chocolate, he never ceased to look at Ulquiorra as if he had won some sort of small battle. Ulquiorra saw no need to rid him of that theory. If he wished to convince himself that he could win in some small way, then Ulquiorra would let him keep his delusions.

That year, even the explanation had not given him enough time to think of something "proper." He found a list of the most popular gifts given and picked one out at the first store he got the chance to visit when he went out grocery shopping by himself. She had, for some reason, still seemed perfectly thrilled with receiving a handkerchief with pink flowers embroidered around the edges, though Ulquiorra saw no point in such a gift when he had yet to see her use a handkerchief in all the years he had known her. She carried it around with her for several days afterward, usually tucked in the pocket of her jacket, and after that he could usually find it on her nightstand, or folded near the corner of her dresser, the dust always brushed away.

But he did not fail to notice his gift lacked the apparent "personal touch" the gifts the other males gave her did. Ishida Uryuu, of course, always made her dresses, perfectly fitted to her form, in her favorite colors, often with floral print or actual fabric flowers attached to near the lapel or the hip. Sado Yasutora's specialty appeared to be stuffed animals, large and excessively fluffy, and while Kurosaki Ichigo's gifts were more generic than the others, the jewelry he bought still seemed to somehow outdo the handkerchief.

If Ishida Uryuu ever found out, Ulquiorra had little doubt he would take great care to flash him countless smug smirks, but Ulquiorra never gave him the chance.

By the time she came out from her first class, her excitement had died down to her usual cheerfulness, though she still mentioned her gifts at least once during each walk between classes. Had she been anyone else, he might have thought she was trying to send hints about getting her a gift as nice as those the other males she knew, but this was her, not anyone else. He had a strong feeling that if he let the day pass without a gift or even a mention, she would be no less cheery, and would likely give him chocolates each year just the same.

As he watched her at his side, he recalled some of her more rambling conversations, particularly the ones after the lights had gone out over the summer or winter break, and she lay in bed unable to sleep and told him about her childhood dreams. The silly things she knew could never really come true, but which she held onto, which she sometimes still dreamed about. Whether or not she thought he was listening, with nothing else to do or think of, he had soaked each one in, like plucking the dreams off a canvas and holding them between fingers against the light.

In one, she stood on a cloud—_impossible, clouds are water vapor, they couldn't be used to stand_—in the white dress of an angel, from what he had seen in pictures over the years. A golden halo hovered above her scalp while cinnamon hair splayed over her shoulders, and two wide, feathered wings sprouted from her back, spreading just in time to catch her as she leapt into the open air and glided across the sky.

He stayed quiet during their last walk to her room and while she did her homework, and during dinner he listened to her ramble and only responded when the particular comment required it. They walked back in the dark, the silence comfortable, familiar. Only when he dropped her off at her room did he finally speak.

"I will return in half an hour. Dress in something warm, preferably a coat and gloves. Be ready when I get back."

He left her no time for questions. He pivoted and started back down the hall as soon as she opened her mouth, and he was gone before she had time to find her voice.

He slipped into his apartment just long enough to open a drawer and slip a black fingerless glove into one pocket and drop off the back of books he carried with him to pass the time during the day. Then he headed back, arriving ten minutes ahead of schedule, and waited in the hall two meters from her door. It was nine minutes later that he heard it click.

Footsteps. Giggle.

"What do you think, Ulquiorra-kun?"

Ulquiorra turned around and found her just outside of the open door, her pants and coat replaced with a long white gown, the edges almost to her feet and the ends of the sleeves brushing her wrists. Each of the hems had been adorned with small fabric flowers, as well as the waist and blouse and skirt, decorating what would otherwise have been plain white fabric. Around her waist, he saw a thick white ribbon, tied at the side with a bow, the pleats flowing out from just below. She twirled once, and the skirt fluttered wide around her ankles and legs before floating back down against her. Her familiar pink coat hung over her arm, a contrast from the rest.

A sharp memory of opening the door of her cell and finding her standing under the window, staring at the moon, black-lined white draped over her against the swath of her cinnamon hair, flashed through his head, though it was gone in an instant.

"Your uniform suited you better," he decided after a long pause. "But this is acceptable."

She stuck out her bottom lip for a second, but giggled right after, as if she had long grown used to what she deemed "rudeness," and he deemed "honesty." He inclined his head toward her right arm hooked near her stomach.

"Put on your coat. Did you bring gloves?"

"Gloves?" she asked with two quick blinks. She looked down, unhooked her coat from her arm, and as she slipped one hand into the sleeve she dug the other into the pink pocket. She looked back up as she pulled out,two thick white gloves clutched in her palm. "Well, yeah, but … it's not _that _cold outside. I'm sure wherever we're going I don't need them."

"You will."

She blinked again, but nevertheless slid her other arm through the sleeve of her coat, tugged it around her, and began to button it up. "Okay …"

He started down the hallway, and she followed, her thin fingers still fumbling with the large buttons of her coat. By the time she slipped the gloves onto her hands, he stopped at the door to the stairwell. Under the coat, the homemade dress now looked like a floral white skirt, flowing thick and wide around her legs. He could have easily mistaken it for hakama in the corner of his eye, and though he didn't know why, that seemed more comfortable. Familiar, even though after these years, he had seen her in pants and floral-print skirts far more times than he had ever seen her in her Arrancar uniform.

As he pushed the door open, she hummed behind him.

"Wait a sec, aren't we going outside …?"

He gave no answer. He slipped through the door, and though at first he thought she might not follow, seconds later, she did, catching the door just in time. They walked up the stairs, the only sound the echo of their footsteps. She kept her hand on the railing while his stayed in his pockets. She didn't mention his own lack of gloves. It didn't matter. It wasn't cold enough for frostbite to occur in the time the gigai would be outside, and he would feel it for long.

He turned the knob on the last door, five stories up, and found to his slight surprise that it turned without resistance. He pushed it open, and a rush of chilled air gusted over both of them. Ulquiorra paid it no mind and held the door while the woman slipped past him. Her mouth opened, but this time, he didn't give her the chance to speak. He let the door fall shut, and by the time he heard the click, he stood near the center of the roof. The woman scampered to stand behind him, and he pulled out the old black glove Urahara Kisuke had given him when he first got the gigai, slipped it onto his hand, and slammed it to the center of his chest.

The false body crumpled to the concrete, motionless and limp, leaving him standing above it.

The woman sucked in a gasp.

"U-Ulquiorra-kun!" she stuttered. He did not turn around, but in the corner of his eye he saw her hands hovering in front of her, frantic and unsure. "What are you doing? I thought you weren't supposed to take off your gigai …"

He rolled his head back, and though he had expected the mask on his head to be a familiar weight, it somehow felt heavier than he remembered. As if despite how long he had worn it, the time—nearly three years, it hit him—that he had spent without it made him used to the lightness. He breathed in deep through his nose, almost surprised when he recalled how reishi-thin the air here was, and how his own reiatsu would fill it up the longer he remained.

"It will be fine there until we return."

He looked to her at last, and found her hands still up, but lowered, as if forgotten, her eyes wide and blinking as the night air swayed the bottom of her skirt back and forth. "What do you mean? W-where are we going?"

He gave no answer.

Ulquiorra took the remaining two steps toward her, his own hakama so loose around his legs he almost thought it uncomfortable. She blinked again.

"Ulquio—wah!"

Without word or warning, he slid both arms around her back and lifted her just off the ground, so her toes could no longer catch the roof beneath her feet.

She jerked her head so hard she almost whacked it into his mask, but by twist of coincidence, she missed it. He felt her breath huff against the side of his face, the first time he felt it on his real skin in he didn't know how long.

"W-what are you doing?" she stammered, but her voice sounded quieter this time, like she was afraid she might break some sacred reverie.

"You should hold on."

"W-wha …?"

If she had had a sentence to finish, she never did.

He slid one hand away just long enough to touch the hilt of his sword—how he had he not noticed his sword until now, when he had felt it essentially absent for so long?—and slide it centimeters out of its sheath. He closed his eyes and murmured words he had so rarely had occasion to use in the past, and which now felt foreign on his lips.

But regardless, the black reiatsu burst from the blade, and only through his own long-practiced control did he keep her shielded from it, guided the stream of power away to disperse into the air, and paying only as much attention as was necessary not to have the roof shatter beneath his feet. His uniform melded to skin and black fur, the hole in his chest widened and exposed, fingers turned to claws, the mask to two horns, and wings and tail that sprouted from nothing as if they had always been there, just waiting to be remembered.

As soon as the membranes solidified, the old forgotten power renewed, he pressed his new talons to the roof and pushed up, her arms jerking up to wrap around his neck, as they soared into the rushing emptiness above.

Her breath caught in her throat while his wings pumped against the wind, guiding them higher and higher into the chilled March air. He felt nothing, but his hair rushed around his face, and her swath of long cinnamon flew around her face, so that she had to squeeze her eyes shut to keep the strands out of her eyes. But he didn't stop. He held her firm, and she clung to his neck so tight it might have hurt had his Hierro not blocked out the sensation. Somehow, though, despite the iron skin, despite the thick clothes she had donned, he could still make out the faint hum of warmth and life within the woman in his grasp.

He watched the buildings below shrink, the people on the ground turn to ants then dots then disappear entirely. He watched the lights of the town glow in the black of the night, the moon only just peeking through the puffed gray clouds painted with tinges of blue and white. The campus faded into the dark, but the lights remained, some of them small dots, some of them illuminating the space around them, and on the streets he saw pairs of yellow and red steaming together as cars buzzed along the streets. All the while, she stayed still, eyes shut against the blast of the icy wind, arms around him, his wings pushing them further and further into the sky.

The town had become almost a miniature by the time he stopped, only a short distance away from the altitude where the air became too thin for humans to breathe. He slowed the movement of the black wings, but flapped them once every second to keep them aloft, though he just as easily could have made a reishi platform to balance as he usually did. The wind around them slowed, and he turned his eyes down toward the woman.

Her warm breaths huffed against the skin near his neck, faster than usual, lips pursed, brow creased. He slipped his tail around her waist to steady her, then brought one clawed hand to brush the strands of hair from her face. He could scarcely feel them through the fur, but he still made out the faintest brush of soft locks, and it almost shocked him how familiar the sensation had become.

Her eyes fluttered as he brought his hand away, blinking against the air, as if waking from a long sleep.

Then they shot open, and her lips parted, breath catching in her throat, as she turned her head to stare at the view beneath them.

As close as she was, he could feel each tremor of shock that ran through her, each shaky breath, each moment of wonder and disbelief and admiration, but never fear. Anxiety from the height, yes, though far less due to all she had seen in the past. Not fear. That was one constant with her, and one that even after all this time he still could not believe. Her eyes widened and gleamed. Her grip tightened, her only binding in the freedom of the air and the wind, far above the world she knew.

Even as he wrapped his second arm over her again, he kept his tail around her waist, his wings beating in constant, steady rhythm while she gazed out at the world, not even seeming to notice her legs dangling below her, her shoes just brushing the fur on his ankles while his talons hung nearby.

He had no need to use Segunda Etapa, of course. But he had had no need to use it while fighting Kurosaki Ichigo either. Then, it had been to show how hopeless he was. To show him the despair he would not accept. This was different. He did not want to show her despair. And he knew this could be done just as well with his first release, or even without a release at all. He could have made a reishi platform and carried her up just the same.

Yet somehow this seemed preferable. He did not know why. But when he thought of the woman, thought of the insane things she dreamed of, things that would be considered impossible in her world that she dreamed of anyway, this seemed to meld far better.

And as he watched her, mouth open, eyes wide and glimmering under the glow of the moon, the chilled air caressing them in gentle gusts as his wings kept them aloft, he decided that he had been right.

He didn't know why. Somehow, he no longer needed to.

She shook her head, slow and steady, as if she had everything in the world to say and yet could not bring the words to her lips.

"Ulquiorra-kun …" she murmured, her mouth still so close to his neck that he felt the warmth of her voice against his skin.

"Well?" he asked. She jerked her head up, lips parted, breath trembling and quiet. "Is this an acceptable gift? It does not fit into any of the prescribed 'gift lists' I have found."

She inhaled. He felt her shiver as she turned to stare at the scene around them, and he wasn't sure whether or not it was due to the cold. Her head shook again, the movement so slight he might not have caught it if his eyes hadn't been trained on her. "This is …" she murmured, but did not finish.

He waited. She looked out at the city below, at the street lamps and cars lighting up the darkness, glowing pinpoints on a simple black canvas. Such things were meaningless to him, but in her eyes, he saw the world reflected. He saw the life, the wonder, the marvel he would never be able to see himself, but which she was all too happy to see for him.

She swallowed so hard he felt it against his chest.

"It's amazing, it's … stunning … I mean, I've flown before, but here … it's like magic …"

"Foolish," he murmured, but with none of the bite the word usually would have held. It flowed into the air like another gust of wind. "This is not magic."

She breathed out. As before, her breath still trembled, and he could almost hear her smile even in the sound of the exhale. "But it feels like it."

He found nothing to say. He looked out at the world surrounding them, this strange human world that had become far more familiar than he once would have thought it could. He felt her warm and alive against him, and wondered if his old self would have actually laughed had he heard this was where he would be today.

She sighed through her nose, the air warm and grounding.

"Thank you, Ulquiorra-kun … really, thank you …"

From the quiet tone of her voice, saturated with meaning he still could not understand, her eyes staring up at him in wonder, her smile all too genuine, he might have thought he had just handed her a throne or precious jewels or something else of great value in this world. But Inoue Orihime did not value those things. Precious jewels and power were nothing to her.

She valued life, and hope, and joy.

All the things that had baffled him most, which she tried every day to show him, and she looked at him like he had just given them to her in return.

She hummed and settled her head against his neck, her eyes still fond and marveling. "I'll have to get you an extra-special chocolate next year to repay you."

He adjusted his arms around her, though she did not need adjusting.

"Perhaps next year you will make one that is actually shaped like a proper heart, so I won't have to reshape it myself."

She giggled, but gave no reply. For once, she contented herself with silence, and he kept them up in the air with only their breaths and the sights of the world around them until her shivers became real and he lowered them back to the roof, and the whole time, he almost felt as if the hole in his chest did not exist.

The next day, five Shinigami—including Captain Hirako Shinji—showed up to investigate the sudden and drastic spike in reiatsu and his breeching of their contract to stay in his gigai, though the lower-ranking Shinigami did most of the scolding while Hirako Shiniji just smirked and shook his head and flicked brief glances at the woman, while she kept her hands clasped and head bowed.

Ulquiorra was placed on two months of what they called "probation," in which he would have to travel to Karakura Town once a week and report to Urahara Kisuke, though what purpose that served Ulquiorra did not know. Hirako Shinji pulled him aside to give him a playful punch on the shoulder and to suggest fthat whatever he had done must have been well worth it, and that once the probation was over, he would try to put in a word for the rules to be lightened. For now, though, there was nothing he could do to stop the inconvenience, and as soon as the Shinigami left, the woman apologized more times than Ulquiorra could count.

But her smile stayed far wider than usual for days after White Day was over, and he could not bring himself to mind the punishment all that much.


	8. Good Night My Sister 2

**This is the first of the sort of chapter I'll occasionally put into the collection: one that focuses mostly on either Ulquiorra or Orihime talking to someone else and features very little of one of them, but which _is _about the two of them ... even if it isn't immediately obvious (in here, it is, but in others it'll be harder). But most chapters will have them both.**

**For the record, I actually really like Ishida. But I don't think his prejudices toward Hollows (especially the guy who cut off his hand) would disappear very easily.**

**Oh, and thank you tremendously for all the reviews for the last chapter! I was a little nervous about it, so I'm glad to hear it turned out. :)**

_**8: Good Night My Sister 2**_

It was only days after the end of final exams that Captain Ukitake Juushirou called Inoue Orihime to Soul Society, with only the message that he had come across something he needed her to see.

She hadn't been able to get anything else out of the Shinigami messenger, either because he had been told not to respond to questions or because he genuinely did not know. Ulquiorra suspected the latter, if only because he doubted anyone could do an impression of a blubbering idiot quite that well. But she went with him with or without her answers, as Ulquiorra supposed was only logical, given her long-time connections with Soul Society. She hugged him especially tightly and kissed both his cheeks, then the tip of his nose—he could never understand that particular quirk of hers, yet while he always just stared at her, she smiled and giggled as if it meant something—and waved until she disappeared into the Senkaimon.

He did not wave back, because he didn't wave. But he left one hand hanging out of his pocket until the gate was closed, and judging by her smile, that was enough.

He was given no time frame for when she would return. He went to bed that night alone, under the glow-in-the-dark stars he had never taken down in nearly two years, and though he had spent countless nights by himself on that futon in that small apartment, somehow it felt emptier, as if his prior belief that she would be there until classes began again in January had somehow changed his perception. He brushed it off as ridiculous, but nonetheless, he woke up earlier than usual and found himself unable to get back to sleep, so he went about his morning routine, ate his breakfast, and read the last of the books he had brought home from the library.

It wasn't until afternoon that he headed outside, bundled in the green coat she had bought him and a somewhat paler scarf. He wouldn't have gone out at all if his books hadn't been due back that day. If possible, he preferred to avoid dealing with the mess of humans that lived in the small town. Most of the time they chattered and bumped into his shoulders and generally acted as an inconvenience, and not for the first time—or the last—he was glad the woman only had one semester left before she graduated, and then, if she wished, they could move somewhere far away.

Or, at the very least, somewhere a bit quieter.

Once he had dropped off his books, he stuffed his hands into his pockets, where they had itched to return his whole walk there, and started back along the sidewalks toward the little apartment. The chilled air gusted through his hair and over his face, but he paid it no mind. If nothing else, this gigai at least left him superior to the surrounding humans in his tolerance to the cold.

"Ulquiorra!"

The voice rang familiar in Ulquiorra's head, even though it was one he hadn't come across in some time.

He turned around just in time to see a thin male with straight dark hair slipping past the other passersby toward him, one hand on the bag over his shoulder and the other adjusting the glasses that bobbed on his nose.

Ulquiorra did not so much as incline his head as the figure stopped in front of him. "Quincy."

The Quincy huffed to catch his breath, though with far more dignity than most of his comrades. He smoothed out his white collared shirt, then used his index finger to push up his glasses one more time. Some obvious tension in his shoulders slipped away.

"Well, good, I wasn't sure I'd find you," he started, the comment more to himself than to Ulquiorra. His brow twisted in a mix of marvel and distaste. "That gigai really does conceal your reiatsu, but your spirit thread is still … obvious enough. Did Inoue-san never convince you to get a cell phone?"

"She has tried several times, though her own helplessness with modern technology does not help matters."

Ishida Uryuu hummed. "Well, I just got a message from her. From Kurosaki, actually, but he passed it on to me, and as I was in the area, I thought I should let you know."

He paused, as if he thought Ulquiorra might give some sort of response. Ulquiorra said nothing, and the Quincy adjusted the hem of his shirt tucked under his belt.

"Inoue-san will be staying in Soul Society for a few days," he went on at last. Ulquiorra's brow lifted, but Ishida Uryuu only shrugged. "Maybe a week, she isn't sure yet."

Ulquiorra blinked.

"Why?"

The Quincy blinked in return, then cleared his throat.

"Ukitake-san … found someone he wanted her to meet," he explained, slow, as if the information felt strange in his mouth. "Her brother."

Ulquiorra paused. "Her brother?"

A nod.

"Yes. Inoue Sora, her older brother. He died when she was twel—"

"She has told me about him."

Ishida Uryuu lifted an eyebrow, but lowered it a second later. "Good. Well, Ukitake-san happened to pass through Rukongai and he got to talking with him and found out his name. Sora-san was really excited to see his sister again. He didn't want to bother her, but as this is winter break, there wouldn't be a better time until next summer. So I'll be letting her boss know that she's taking her vacation days early."

He waited again, but Ulquiorra just held his gaze, impassive, silent. The Quincy huffed, shook his head, and turned back in the direction he had come.

"Why does she wish to spend a week with him?" Ulquiorra asked with only a tint of his inner confusion slipping through. The Quincy stopped. Ulquiorra leaned his head to one side. "He isn't leaving Soul Society, is he?"

The Quincy's head snapped back around. He stared, as if he thought that he had misheard. He blinked once, then once more, his lips parted and eyebrows furrowed before they lifted again in a slow movement that made his glasses slip down his nose. "Why … you really don't get it?" he breathed. "You're joking, right? Wait, nevermind. You don't joke."

"Neither do you."

"Hm," the Quincy murmured. His eyes hardened further, like he had just been reminded who he was speaking to. "He's her _brother. _You said she told you about him. He died when she was twelve, quite tragically, I've heard. I … didn't know well her at the time, but Kurosaki's told me that story. She hasn't seen him in seven years. She—"

"Ten."

The Quincy stopped, mouth still open.

"What?"

"Ten years. You said he died when she was twelve," Ulquiorra reminded him. "She is twenty-two years old."

Ishida Uryuu closed his mouth. His tense shoulders dropped. "Oh … right," he muttered. "Well, she did see him after that. Briefly. Though from what I've heard, I'd hardly call it a proper meeting."

"Why? Did she meet him as a Plus?"

"No," the Quincy retorted. He held his head a little higher, his eyes sterner than a second before. "He was a Hollow."

Ulquiorra wasn't sure what answer he had expected. But it felt for a moment like standing in the cell in Las Noches, seeing the woman turn on her heels and run to slap him. He had seen every second of it, and he could have stepped away, but he remained, and even allowed his head to turn when her hand met his cheek. He felt no pain. But the strangeness of it struck him nonetheless, and now, though his face did not change, his own shoulders tensed as the Quincy's had, and the skin between his brows a bit firmer than before.

The Quincy took in his face, and Ulquiorra couldn't tell whether he was appraising it or saving it to memory for blackmail. But regardless, he sighed.

"I guess she never mentioned that, then." He shrugged and glanced to the side. "Well, I can't say I'm surprised, you don't exactly seem like the type to open up to."

Ulquiorra gave no answer. The Quincy adjusted his jacket.

"From what I've heard, he stayed after he died to watch over her. But watching her move on made him lose himself. He became a Hollow, and she was the first person he went after. He almost killed her."

"… almost," Ulquiorra repeated, the word strange on his tongue.

"Yes," Ishida Uryuu confirmed. "Kurosaki stopped him. Well, actually, from what Kurosaki said, he just helped out. It was Inoue-san who really stopped him. Who saved _Kurosaki._ She made him remember who he used to be and fight the Hollow inside him."

Ulquiorra tried to imagine her standing before a Hollow. An ordinary Hollow, likely fairly weak, but no ordinary Hollows were weak compared to ordinary humans. And she had been that a long time ago, before her powers had developed and her Shun Shun Rikka had emerged. From what he understood, she hadn't even been able to see spirits. He would have thought it odd to imagine her standing in front of a Hollow, an ordinary, weak human, likely having never seen a Hollow before in her life, defending Kurosaki Ichigo despite the danger to herself, but the image somehow fit far too well.

"And she … has forgiven him," Ulquiorra murmured. He wasn't sure himself whether or not it was a question.

The Quincy did not so much as blink.

"Yes. She has."

Ulquiorra tilted his head so slightly he wasn't sure if it was even visible. "You are unsure about this."

This time, Ishida Uryuu jerked his head away. He pressed his lips together, tensed his brow, then forced it smooth and turned back, looking more at Ulquiorra's shoulder than his face.

"No, she's forgiven him," he insisted. "I'm sure of that."

"But you don't believe she should have."

The Quinch flashed him one glance before he turned his head to stare at a shop across the street. Several people passed by, oblivious to their conversation, but Ishida Uryuu paid them no mind. He took slow, even breaths, calm, but his face betrayed his discontent. The conflict going on between the honor and tradition he took such pride in, and the things he had learned from experience, and from those he cared for. Things he could not so easily push aside.

"Inoue-san … has always seen things differently than I have," he answered at last. "When I look at a Hollow, I see a monster who kills. Merciless, heartless, with no feelings or remorse. And that is what I do, as a Quincy. I get rid of the Hollows before they can hurt innocent humans."

He paused and swallowed. His tense brow softened, and his hard eyes turned toward the ground, gentler than before.

"But Inoue-san … she sees something else. And maybe that's why. She saw her brother even after he had become that monster."

Ulquiorra inclined his head just enough. "And she makes you doubt your convictions."

The Quincy huffed.

"I told you. We see things differently," he insisted. His brow tensed again, then loosened, as if he was speaking to himself more than Ulquiorra. "She … forgives. Forgives actions I never could. If I had known someone before they became a monster … I can't say I know what I would do."

He lifted his head back up. He held Ulquiorra in his gaze, his eyes harder once more, though not as hard as they had been at first.

"I look at you and see an Arrancar who killed Kurosaki twice over, who kidnapped and threatened an innocent young woman, who cares nothing for his own comrades, who likely killed countless others with no remorse before that. Who cut off my hand," he added a bit more quietly, spite evident in his tone even as he tried to hide it. He paused, pressed his lips together, and let his breath out in what was almost a sigh. "Inoue-san sees a person, though how she sees that I don't know. She sees someone worth a second chance."

He stared at Ulquiorra, but Ulquiorra did not respond. They both waited for the other to speak, but neither did. The winter wind rushed around them, cold and harsh, and the voices of the other residents passing nearby seemed as distant as they had ever been. The Quincy sighed in full and shook his head.

"I may not understand that part of her. But I'll always admire it. I guess … she's stronger than me, in that way."

He looked at his feet, head tilted again. Ulquiorra's hands tensed in his pockets, then let themselves go. Ishida Uryuu looked back up, and his eyes hardened to the same conviction they had worn before. The same suspicion, the same disdain.

"At any rate, _try _to be understanding and think of someone other than yourself," he insisted with more than a little sarcasm. "She can finally see her brother again. I know you can't be happy for her, but—"

"Is she happy?"

The Quincy blinked, mouth wide open before he clamped it shut. "What?"

"Is she happy?" Ulquiorra repeated, forming each word more carefully than usual. "To spend time with him? Will that make her happy?"

Ishida Uryuu's lips parted. The sun flashed across his glasses and glared them white, and when the shine vanished his eyes had gone hard again, his lips pressed together, the determination in his face almost palpable.

"Yes. It will."

He held Ulquiorra's gaze as if to pin him to the ground, but Ulquiorra did not even try to look away. He stared back for several seconds before he turned halfway back toward his empty apartment.

"Very well."

He only caught a glimpse of the Quincy's widened eyes, lifted eyebrows, parted lips. That did not matter. He walked away with another word, hands in pockets until he took out his key to open his front door.

* * *

"Ulquiorra-kun!"

He had listened every day for six days. He rarely left the apartment anyway except when he was meeting her at her classes or her dormitory, and during the break he only left when she did, except for occasional trips to the library. This time, he had picked up a week's supply of books the day after the Quincy had given him the news, as well as food, and he stayed close to the door in case his doorbell happened to break and he would have to hear her knock.

It hadn't been necessary, it seemed. She knocked so loud that with a bit more force she might have knocked down the door.

She threw herself into his arms before he had the chance to open his mouth, and only by a long-developed reflex did he manage to catch her, one arm steadying her back while the other remained in his pocket. Her face settled near the side of his neck, her arms warm over his shoulder blades, their torsos pressed together in familiar weight, familiar life and pulse. He would have once called it ludicrous that he could forget something in only six days, and indeed, he had thought he remembered it perfectly. But this time it felt like she was hugging him for the first time, like he had never before felt her breath and her heartbeat against him. It made his own breath catch in his throat, the beating organ in his gigai pause before it continued as before.

If he had been the type, he might have compared it to going on his first mission to the material world, and instead of the gray sky and the moon, he had seen the sun.

That was different, though. He hadn't cared back then. Now it mattered.

"You have come back, then," he noted without need.

"Uh-huh!" she burst, pulling her face away just in time to show her smile, the same as he remembered it, her cheeks flushed and her breath fast as if she had run the whole way up the stairs. "Sorry I was away so long, I hope Kurosaki-kun or Ishida-kun told you? I got to see my brother! Ukitake-san found him! I never thought I'd see him again or at least not for a long time, and I knew he was happy and he'd passed on but it's just so _great _to see him! He's doing really well, he's got a lot of friends and all the other people in the Third District just love him!"

She sucked in air through her nose to make up for what she lost in her speech. Her eagerness calmed, her smile dimmed but not saddened, and her eyes as bright as ever.

"I'm really glad to be back, though."

Ulquiorra adjusted his stance on the floor to keep from falling over due to her leaning against him. "Did you not enjoy being with your brother?"

"Of course I did!" she agreed with a nod so enthusiastic she almost knocked him over. "But I missed you, too!"

His shoulders tensed. He blinked.

"Why?"

She looked back, unflinching, unblinking, the glow in her eyes so real and so familiar that he almost didn't believe he had gone days without seeing it.

"Because … Onii-chan means a lot to me. But so do you. He was a part of my life for years. And now you're a part of my life, too."

Her smile stretched wide across her cheeks, and she stared up at him with eyes that smiled right along with her lips.

He never knew what to do when she said such things, especially as he had already called them silly plenty of times and knew it would make no difference. So he just stood there, staring back at her, and she squeezed him one more time before she scampered off to the kitchen, muttering something about going shopping so she could make them a special dinner.

Ulquiorra stood still a long time after, and the faint warmth of her skin, even through both their clothes, forced away the chill of the room and did not fade away until she brought his ear to her chest on the futon and replaced it with the beating of her heart.


	9. First Step

**Apologies to all the reviewers I haven't been able to send replies to yet, and an advance apology as the next chapter may take some time: my twelve-year-old cat had to have fairly major surgery on both his back legs, after he likely went into a neighbor's yard, got scared, and tried to jump over their spike-topped fence, getting his legs caught and broken in the process. So I'm on call for the next six-ish weeks until he's healed, to help my parents as much as possible. But I think I should at least get a bit posted during that time, just maybe less frequently, and I may not have time to reply to reviews (though I'd love to - thank you for all the kind words!). Anyway, on to the chapter!**

**Fun fact: on the official map of Karakura Town, "Orihime's current apartment" and "Inoue family home" are both present. Assuming that isn't her distant aunt, that means her parents have lived in the same town. All these years. Also, apparently Karakura Town is actually a part of western Tokyo, at least according to the wiki.**

**I think college graduation ceremonies in Japan tend to be more formal, due to the culture of honor and tradition, but they **_**do **_**have Western-style ceremonies in regards to the caps and gowns (which differs from high school graduations, where they just wear their uniforms). As for a certain situation which occurs in this chapter, if it seems unrealistic, give it time: there are actually several things brought up in these oneshots that are "ongoing plot points," and will be dealt with further in later chapters. And there will be more conflict as time goes on. But that's all I'm sayin'.**

**This also ends the first "story arc" (of sorts) of this story, namely, Orihime's college life, and moves on to, well, the rest of it. It's also the shortest arc, since I have a whole lot more to say other than just their college experiences - and you can expect me to go into more difficulties as time goes on. So the next arc will be notably longer.  
**

_**9: First Step**_

It looked like a sea of black hats and gowns and dark hair and peachy skin, and she stood out like a swath of cinnamon paint flung onto a canvas with a wild laughing hand.

He had blended into the furthest corner of the highest section of the audience, away from the chattering humans, hands stuffed into his pockets and black and white clothes blending into the wall, but still she made him out. She jumped into the air and beamed with each wide, eager wave even among the other straight and silent students in the line toward the stage.

He didn't wave back. She didn't expect him to. Her smile did not dim, so bright he could have found it in a dark, crowded room, and she jittered so hard he could see it despite the long distance between them.

Ulquiorra knew nothing more about human graduation ceremonies than he had been told over the past few weeks as she purchased her oversized black gown—which looked more like a cloth draped over her form than a proper outfit—and a hat that Ulquiorra almost suspected Yammy had stepped on before she explained that they were made that way. Despite the gown, though, she still insisted on finding a nice outfit to go underneath it, though he convinced her to wear sensible shoes rather than the "high heels" so many of the females here wore. He couldn't see the logic in such shoes any more now than he had been able to when he first saw them four years ago, and eventually he decided that there were some things about humans he would never comprehend.

Arisawa Tatsuki had sent her a congratulations package the week before, and the woman spent nearly half a day ranting over it. She seemed disappointed at first that her friend couldn't return from her year "studying abroad" in America in time for her graduation, but that disappointment lasted all of five seconds, as it always did with her, before understanding took hold. Most of her friends wouldn't be able to make the ceremony: Sado Yasutora and Ishida Uryuu because of their own coinciding graduations, and Kurosaki Ichigo and the other Shinigami due to their duties in Soul Society. But Ulquiorra didn't for a second doubt that she would insist on going to Arisawa Tatsuki's own ceremony—belated because of her traveling—in seven months time, and he would once again be forced to stand among thousands of loud, overenthusiastic humans until the ceremony was over.

Or perhaps he would just stay in the apartment. He never could guess when such things would upset her and make her try to change his mind, or when she would just leave it be.

For now, though, it was only them. She wanted to go to a small cafe nearby for lunch, and then they planned to get a head-start on searching for a larger apartment in Karakura Town now that they would be sharing it all the time. He saw no need for any more space, as long as the double-sized futon would roll out on the floor, but apparently she thought "room to grow" was a good idea, and had rambled on for several minutes about finding a complex that allowed pets. He had listened, on some level, but mostly he just stared ahead, the familiar sound of her voice resounding in his ears.

She had spent the past several summers and winter breaks staying in his apartment, so it would hardly be a new arrangement. But it still struck him that she had agreed without question, seemingly without thought, as if the idea no longer brought about the least bit of hesitation as it had when he asked years ago.

He lifted his head to watch her climb the steps of the stage, her gown bouncing around her, the ends of her pink dress flitting just under the bottom hem of the black. She bowed to the president, and he bowed his head in return—though his was repeated and routine, and hers looked like she was bowing to a king—and he handed her a rolled up scroll of paper tied in the center with the black ribbon. He could almost see her cheeks redden, her smile grow to break the confines of her face, her arms twitch as if to throw herself forward and hug everyone present, though luckily she restrained herself on that front.

The rest of the ceremony mattered little to him. Her swath of cinnamon hair vanished into the sea of black hats and gowns, and he slipped out of the seating area before the other students were given their scrolls of paper, a final speech was made, and all the rest of the audience bustled out at once, like a herd of cattle rushing at a gate which would fit only one at a time. He stepped into the hall outside, found a spot near one of the walls, and waited.

He could just make out the voices on the speakers, though he couldn't pick out the words. He heard the applause from the hundreds of attendees, and savored the last minute he would spend in the empty hallway until she came out to meet him. He had almost suggested they pick a meeting place far off campus, and he would wait there rather than trying to find her in the mess of others dressed in the same dark garb. But she had overslept that morning and by the time she was done rushing through her routine, it was time for her to run to the ceremony, and she hadn't stopped enough for him to bring it up.

As he had expected, the family and friends of the graduates streamed out like cattle. Or perhaps Hollows, the lower ones, racing for a single food source. The stench of human—which the woman called "body odor," but which he identified as a far more complex and far more unpleasant smell—flooded his surroundings, the silence growing to chatter that threaten to break his gigai's ear drums. He tightened his hands in his pockets, pressed himself against the wall, and stayed where he was as the halls filled, and he remained when the graduates began to trickle in from one of the other entrances, far fewer in number and, thankfully, less frantic, perhaps due to the hats that looked far too easy to knock off their heads.

"Excuse me, um, young man."

Ulquiorra turned.

A man and a woman stood in front of him, both of them dressed in the same formal garb worn by all the other visitors—though these clothes were older, Ulquiorra noted from the tears in the hem of the woman's short skirt and the lapel of the man's jacket. Both of them with dark hair, the woman's curled in ringlets far too tight then pinned up in a bun that looked as if she had used an entire can of hairspray to hold it up. Ulquiorra could make out the stench of sharp perfume even from the meter and a half distance between them. Stubble stuck out on the man's chin, as if he hadn't bothered to shave.

Both of them smiled. Ordinary. Plain. Two humans of no consequence, no matter what their odd appearance and unpleasant stench.

He kept his hands firm in his pockets.

"Yes?"

The man stepped forward a bit, his smile friendlier, though Ulquiorra still did not care for it.

"Do you know where we can go to look for our daughter?"

"You're waiting for someone, right?" the woman added, her voice far too sweet, like the time Inoue Orihime had put three times the recommended amount of sugar in a dessert without realizing. Her thick eyeliner and bright red cheeks looked like overly-frosted cupcakes, if his recollection of the desserts behind the glass display at the bakery were any indication.

Ulquiorra flicked his eyes toward the other graduates, checked for a swath of cinnamon hair, then looked back again.

"That is correct."

"Great," the man sighed with a slight chuckle. "Are they lined up by family name? We're looking for Inoue."

Ulquiorra's stance did not change. He did not so much as blink. But in his pockets, his fingers tensed.

"… Inoue?"

The man nodded, smile undisturbed. "Yes, our daughter. Inoue Orihime."

"You are Inoue Orihime's … parents?" Ulquiorra asked. His brow creased for a second before he straightened it again.

The woman nodded, her smile wider than her husband's, the thick crimson color on her lips like the smiles painted on the mouths of clowns in the "circuses" Inoue Orihime had told him about.

"Yes, do you know her?"

Ulquiorra held himself straighter.

"This is the first time I have seen you," he noted, quiet, and yet despite the incessant noise and people scrambling to find their friends and family nearby, the words cut into the couple before him like a blade held to their throats. He tilted his head. "And I believe some time since you have seen her."

The man cleared his throat.

"Yes, well … it's been a long time, yes," he agreed, as if it had been merely two weeks. He shrugged. "Her brother sort of ran off with her when she was little, and we thought she lived nearby, but we were going through some … problems at the time. But we've worked through those now, and after we asked her aunt, we found out she came here and thought we'd come to see her graduate. We weren't sure we'd be able to catch her at first, but it's hard to miss that hair, isn't it?"

The woman nodded. Her dark mouth twisted a second before she forced it straight again. "It always … stood out, quite a bit," she added, and though she smiled, her voice bit through the air.

The thought crossed Ulquiorra's mind to choke her with her own oversized red earrings, but he brushed it off.

"Anyway, if you're a friend of hers, how about we go meet her together?" the man offered with another chuckle and a smile that Ulquiorra wondered if he had painted on like his wife's lipstick. "She's actually got a little brother at home now, in middle school. We can take her back to the apartment and introdu—"

"Leave."

The couple jolted, then furrowed their brows and parted their lips. The man inclined his head, a chuckle slipping out as if he didn't believe what he had heard. "… what?"

"Are you deaf?" Ulquiorra asked, shoulders straight and eyes hard. "I said 'leave.'"

"What?" the man blubbered. "Y-young man, this is very—"

"Perhaps you did not understand," Ulquiorra cut him off. He took one step forward. Just one, but the couple leaned back, and Ulquiorra held his ground. "I am telling you to leave. This is not a request. This is an order. You will leave, right now, or I will make you leave myself. And believe me when I say my methods will not be the least bit pleasant."

The man tried to speak and failed. His wife grasped his arm, her over-plucked brows creasing, the cheekbones she had taken far too much effort to pronounce adding twenty years to her face.

"She … she's our _daughter_!" the woman gasped, her eyeliner casting shadows over her cheeks.

Ulquiorra took a final step, and this time, the two almost stumbled into the crowd behind them and only kept their balance by grasping each other's arms. He leaned in, eyes narrowed, shoulders tense as one hand moved to slip out of his pocket if it called.

"You gave up the chance to claim her nearly two decades ago," he hissed, so quiet no one but them could hear. "Now get out, or I will escort you out."

The man opened his mouth, but found no words, and with parted lips and wide eyes, the two slipped back into the hoards of people behind them. The woman glanced twice over her shoulder, expression twisted, horrified, yet with a hint—perhaps only a hint—of remorse. But it was too small for Ulquiorra to deem it worth something, and even if they had come to him on their hands and knees and begged him rather than their former approach, his response wouldn't have differed.

He watched their retreating forms and felt the tension in his posture, through his shoulders and his stance. He caught several confused glances from other relatives and friends and graduates, but he paid them no mind. He watched until he saw the couple disappear through the doors to the outside. Far away. And yet still far too close for his liking.

"Ulquiorra-kun!"

The flash of familiar reiatsu hit him only a second after the voice, and he wondered how he had been so distracted as to not notice it before. He turned just in time to see the woman weaving her way through the remaining crowd, her scroll of paper tucked under one arm while the other waved high in the air, her smile wide, pink and real. No crimson lipstick, no painted face. Just her.

She bounded the last few steps and twirled, her arms still shaking within the oversized sleeves, her feet bouncing with excess energy even as she stopped.

"Did you see me? I hope you could see me! I saw you! You were so high up, there were seats up close so you could have sat there but I guess you never liked being with so many other people, but I saw you looking back so I guess you saw me too! It was great! The guy in front of me had his cell phone on and it went off right before we went on stage, and I thought that was a little rude not to turn it off but everybody forgets so it's okay to forget sometimes! Anyway, I can't believe I'm done! Four years and I have my diploma! Well, not my _real _diploma, they send that in the mail, and they said I'd get it in about—"

She stopped when his fingers clasped tight around the soft, warm flesh of her wrist and palm, and tugged her forward toward the nearby exit.

"Come, woman. We're leaving."

She jogged to catch up with him and slipped out the door as he pushed it open. "Huh? So soon?" she asked. He picked up his pace almost on reflex, and she jogged a little faster and grinned. "Um, okay, yeah! You said we were going to that little cafe down the stre—"

"We're not going to the cafe."

She slowed for a second before his unrelenting pace forced her to jog again.

"What? You changed your mind?" she asked with two quick blinks. "Where are going instead?"

His eyes narrowed, and for a few moments he flicked through the vague mental map he had created of the island country in the four years since he had come to live here.

"Urayasu," he decided, more to himself than to her. "That is plenty far, yes."

She stiffened. "W-_what_? B-but Ulquiorra-kun, do we have—"

"We both own train passes. If we leave immediately, we should be able to return on the last train."

"But why Urayasu?" she went on a second later, her expression still baffled as he saw it in his peripheral vision.

"You mentioned a 'theme park' you wish to visit," Ulquiorra noted. His brow furrowed as he searched for the memory, then he smoothed it out and nodded. "We will go there. The name was strange, but I believe it involved large mice, castles, singing, and—"

"_We're going to Disneyland?!" _she shrieked, so loud that several people nearby jolted and scrambled away, and Ulquiorra might have flinched himself had he not long gotten used to her randomness. Her hand jittered in his own, her steps now both bouncy and shaky, her eyes a mix of confused, panicked, and thrilled._ "_U-Ulquiorra-kun, we couldn't afford—"  
"Soul Society has continued to give me a penchant to live here. As I have been intelligent with spending, I have enough savings to afford it. We will simply stop by the apartment to collect them."

Her lips parted and closed again in turns. "B-but we … we couldn't …"

"We can and we are going to," he insisted, his voice unchanged. He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. "Unless you have changed your mind about wishing to visit to park?"

She threw one hand in front of her and waved it as she shook her head so hard that her hair bounced over her face.

"No, no!" A long, trembling sigh slipped past her lips, and she leapt into the air, her other arm pumped high, her eyebrows almost vanishing into her hairline as her lips curled into the widest smile he had ever seen on her face. "I … I can't believe it! I'm really going to _Disneyland_! Onii-chan always said he'd take me one day when we had more money but he died before we could go and, oh, I'm so _excited_! We can go on all the rides, or at least a lot of them, and see Main Street and meet the princesses! I know they're not the _real _princesses and they're just people in costumes, and people always said I was kinda weird because I loved the princesses so much and they didn't even _have _Disneyland in Japan until a couple years before I was born and I'll have to bring my camera or maybe just buy some disposables and Ulquiorra-kun I know there's some stuff you'll like, too, like maybe the Pirates of the Caribbean ride 'cause that's got—"

She rambled half the way back to the apartment, tripping over her own feet in her excitement three times, but his hand in hers always halted her fall.

He didn't respond, but the rest of the day, she never once stopped smiling. He watched her the whole time, a silent observer as she screamed on the roller coasters, took photos with the women in costume, had a man in strange clothes paint her cheeks, and stuffed her face with so much unhealthy food he wondered how her stomach didn't explode. And after hours of standing the burning sun, both of them covered in sweat, she hugged him with hands sticky from cotton candy and kissed him though all he did was stand still.

When they arrived at the apartment long after dark, he did not even bother to wash. He saw the woman step over the threshold of the doorway, her old life far behind her, and he fell asleep with her close to his side, the stench of foreign humans, the smell of artificial sugar, and the familiar scent of Inoue Orihime lingering on his clothes.


	10. Sunrise

**Once again, I want to give a _tremendous _thank you to all who have left reviews on this story. I'm sorry I haven't been able to respond to all of you, but your reviews mean the world to me, and are my inspiration for continuing.**

**This chapter was, in part, inspired by a certain sketch by Rusky-Boz, now floating somewhere around the internet. It involved Ulquiorra, Orihime, and awkward-but-apparently-comfortable sleeping positions. And it's stinkin' adorable. Because Ulquiorra's probably awake, confused, and yet doesn't seem to give a darn. So I don't claim ownership of that, uh, sleeping position. XD This is also pure unadulterated fluff. Well, there's a bit of contemplation, comparison and contrast, and whatnot, because it's me and I can't resist, but it's mostly just something that made me smile to write. I hope it's able to make you smile a little, too. :)**

**Oh, and I (due to my inner language enthusiast) changed the official cardinal numbers used for the Espada. Officially, Ulquiorra is the "Cuatro Espada," but the cardinal number should be "cuarto," and since "Espada" (meaning "blade") is a feminine noun, the number should match, giving us "cuarta." This ticked me off for some reason while watching/reaching, since some of them are correct (like "Sexta") and some … really aren't. Technically, they should be Primera, Segunda, Tercera, Cuarta, Quinta, Sexta, Septima, Octava, Novena, and Decima. I think Kubo-sensei got less than half of those. I can't blame him for not speaking perfect Spanish, of course - I just don't get why only some are correct. *shrugs***

**I hope you all enjoy the fluff while it lasts. Things are set to get a bit darker in a few chapters ... but that's all I'm going to say.**

_**10: Sunrise**_

The first thing he felt when sleep faded away was a hard mattress against his back.

His eyes snapped open to the same artificial light which always glowed above him, and he pushed away the blankets with a long-practiced motion and pushed himself from his straight supine position to sit on the edge of the bed. Then he stood, smoothed out the bedsheets, and walked across his room and into the hall to head to the morning meeting which had been announced the day before.

With the lack of Fracciones to fill up space, his own palace was quiet and empty, only the sound of his own footsteps to break the silence. It wasn't until he arrived in the main part of Las Noches that he began to see others, sometimes the Fracciones of other Espada who had nothing else to do, and sometimes a servant fulfilling whatever task they had been given. Occasionally a lesser Arrancar shivered and hurried their pace as they passed him, but not from any cold. There was no cold here, nor heat. If there had been temperature, his long sleeves might have bothered him in the warmth, or those like Harribel and Grimmjow in the chill. He paid no attention to the other Numeros and servants and didn't stop until he reached the meeting room, the hall almost identical to those of his own palace, but with the doors arranged just differently enough for him to have long mapped it out and mastered its navigation.

As usual, the other Espada arrived at almost the same time as he did, except for Nnoitra and Yammy, who both showed up just as the doors were about to open. And open they did, right on schedule. The ten Arrancars slipped into the gaping meeting room as they did whenever they were summoned, and took the same seats they always took, Ulquiorra the only one sitting properly while everyone else crossed their legs or their arms or put their elbows on the table. Some of them chattered, some of them jiggled their legs, and some others—Starrk, most notably—looked about ready to fall right back asleep in his chair, and possibly fall out of the chair entirely, as he had once done when the meeting was called in the middle of his nap.

Granted, as Ulquiorra was aware, almost everything happened while Starrk was asleep, given how often he slept. So he wasn't sure how that one particular meeting made a difference.

Only two minutes later, the other doors opened, and three figures draped in white strolled down the last stretch of hallway toward them. Aizen-sama stood in front, with Ichimaru and Tousen trailing steps behind him, his smile slight and pleasant, and his gait casual. Ulquiorra suspected that even in the midst of a war, he would have acted the same way. Aizen-sama had no need to rush. He stepped into the room from the florescent white glow of the hallway and stopped just inside the threshold, the new darkness casting shadows over each crevice in his face.

"Good morning, dear Espada," Aizen-sama greeted them in the same flowing, soft voice as he did each day. "How about some tea before we begin?"

The meeting was standard. The Espada only met several times a week at most, according to human time. Grimmjow and Nnoitra made it painfully clear how much they did not want to be there, Grimmjow tapping his foot on the underside of the table and Nnoitra occasionally making obscene faces toward Harribel, who did not even spare him a glance. Aizen-sama had very little to tell them aside from updates. But near the end, just as some of the more impatient Espada were getting ready to leap up from their chairs, he turned to Ulquiorra, his smile as gentle yet deceptive, so familiar it was practically engraved into his eyes.

"Oh, and I have a task I'd like you to take on for me, Ulquiorra," Aizen-sama began. "Just a small mission. I'd like you to go to the material world and seek someone out for me."

Ulquiorra had already heard rumors of the description of the target in question, but nonetheless, he listened to his instructions and replied with his usual "yes." It had been some time since he had had a mission, but it merely meant he would spend his day completing a task rather than reading some of the books Ichimaru and Tousen—though why Tousen owned books without a way to read them, he did not know—had collected for their own entertainment, usually involving history of each of the worlds and war strategies, pulling together any information that might be useful to him when the upcoming battles commenced.

He was aware of several sets of eyes on him the entire time Aizen-sama relayed the mission. He paid them no mind. They were dismissed, and he stepped out of the room and started back the way he had come. Eight sets of footsteps walked in their own direction, but when Ulquiorra turned the first corner—the mission was simple, but best to retrieve his Zanpakutou from his palace regardless—he heard one set following him. Clanky. Obnoxious. He had long memorized that particular set of feet, if only because of how often the occupant bothered him.

"Hey, Ulquiorra."

Ulquiorra did not slow his pace, nor hasten it. He kept walking as if he had heard nothing. The footsteps behind him quickened.

"Ulquiorra."

He walked on. The hallway stretched out before him, the only turn far in the distance. He knew there was no way to avoid confrontation with his lowered-ranked comrade, though he might have used sonido to get back to his palace. But Grimmjow would use that as something else to mock him for, and Ulquiorra did not feel like giving him the pleasure.

Quicker steps, so close he could feel the rush of air on the backs of his legs.

"_Ulquiorra._"

At the first brush of fingers on his shoulder, Ulquiorra's hand shot back to grasp the thick wrist in tight fingers. The touch of another being had long perfected the instinct to react, react before they took the opportunity to strike. Living in the relative calm of Las Noches within the vast desert did not change that. Threats remained threats.

He turned his head, but kept his grasp on the wrist. Grimmjow frowned and tugged. Ulquiorra held firm.

"What is it?"

Grimmjow huffed through his nose. He gave one more tug, and this time, Ulquiorra let go just in time for him to stumble backward from the force of his own pull. Grimmjow caught his balance, lowered his brow, then straightened and smirked, his hands in his pockets as Ulquiorra returned his hand to his own.

"Hope you didn't forget about our fight later on," the blue-haired Arrancar coaxed.

Ulquiorra inclined his head.

"I agreed to no fight," he corrected. "There would be no point, as you have plenty of other options should you wish to train, and the outcome would be quickly decided."

"Oh, you so sure about that?" Grimmjow countered. "Prove it!"

"There is no need. Cuarta is ranked higher than Sexta."

Pause.

Grimmjow's nose wrinkled, brow creased, his mouth twitching as it always did at times like this, while his body tensed as if to ready himself to pounce on nearby prey. But despite his general stupidity, he kept his place. He had enough sense to know that a fight in the middle of the hall would not end in his favor.

He gritted his teeth.

"You just keep fallin' back on that rank! Every time!" he shouted. His voice echoed throughout the hall, bounced off the ceiling and rang back to Ulquiorra's ears. Ulquiorra did not move, not even when Grimmjow took a step forward, close enough now so Ulquiorra could smell his rancid breath. "You're scared to face me, Ulquiorra, and you know it!"

Ulquiorra said nothing.

Then he turned on his heels, hands still in his pockets, and started back down the hall.

Grimmjow growled, but didn't follow , and a minute later Ulquiorra heard a second set of footsteps walk in the other direction.

He had barely had five minutes of peace after Grimmjow's steps subsided before he felt another burst of reiatsu nearby, and soon after, the thundering footsteps approached him in a stride necessarily longer than his. He paid it no attention.

"Hey Ulquiorra! Where're you goin'?"

Once again, Ulquiorra stopped, though he very well might have kept on walking and ignored the irritant he had no reason to deal with. He glanced over his shoulder. Yammy stood not two meters behind him, large arms at his sides, and Ulquiorra held him in steady gaze.

"You attended the meeting, Yammy. I have a mission."

"Oh yeah!" Yammy almost shouted—though it was hard to tell shouting from his normal speaking voice—with a grin as he scratched the back of his head. "Hey, I'll go with ya!"

Ulquiorra blinked in the most obvious display of annoyance he was willing to give. "It is a simple scouting mission to the material world. I don't need assistance."

Yammy took a step forward nonetheless, his eager grin undeterred.

"Aw, come on, don't hog all the fun!" he whined. "I hardly get to go anywhere!"

"You are called where you are needed, Yammy."

"Just let me tag along, Ulquiorra, I'll help you out!" Yammy tried again with another step.

Ulquiorra eyed him for several seconds, then turned his back to stare down the hall.

"I told you, I don't need any help," he repeated with the same impassive voice. "But if you are so insistent, then you may accompany me, if you wish."

"Great!"

The floor trembled under Yammy's weight with the next step, and Ulquiorra could make out the destructive, excited grin from his voice alone. He started toward his destination once more with the faint and likely vain hope of no more interruptions, not bothering to glance over his shoulder.

"We leave in ten minutes. Be sure you are prepared."

Yammy might have offered a response—indeed, Ulquiorra heard the unnecessary loud noise of him drawing in a breath to speak—but he turned the corner at the end of that particular hall, and to his fortune, Yammy did not see fit to call out his reply.

Ulquiorra ran over the instructions again and fitted Yammy into the equation. The mission would likely be more difficult with another Espada present, especially one as violent and careless as Yammy, but if he didn't bring him along Yammy would whine for days on end. Of course, Yammy liked to whine about every mission regardless, but perhaps one agreement would deter him for a bit. At any rate, Ulquiorra knew he could correct any of Yammy's mistakes himself, and Aizen-sama's objective would be accomplished nonetheless.

A trip to the material world was far from a challenge. Scout out anyone who may pose a threat, eliminate them, and retreat. It was better to get Yammy's eagerness out of his system on a mission that made little difference, after all.

The sound of his footsteps echoed in the empty hallway, his movements steady, even, trained, and if there had been a chill when a lesser Arrancar shivered in passing him, Ulquiorra could not feel it.

* * *

The first thing he felt when sleep faded away was the old wrinkled futon beneath him, the pillows and blankets shifted far out of place, his pajama shirt riding up on his stomach, and thin legs against his torso while bare arms wrapped around his head.

Warm, familiar-scented breath puffed against his scalp, a cheek pressed to his hair, and one arm covered his eyes. He shifted just enough to blink his eyelids open and clear the blurred ceiling lit up by the pale autumn sun. One of her hands had come to rest on the top of his head, and in sleep, her fingers rubbed back and forth through mussed black hair to the skin below. He let his eyes close, breathed, then opened them again, eyelids drooped, and stared at the ceiling while the fingers continued to move.

He had pressed his ear to the center of her chest the night before, a steady sound in the darkness, and it remained now, thumping against his head. The pulse of life, of the human organ pumping blood throughout the body, the thudding which never ceased to feel foreign and reassuring all at once. She suggested once, after they had both lost track of the times they shared a bed, that it had become like a lullaby to him, and nearly cried when he asked what a lullaby was.

Ulquiorra breathed again, and the scent lingered, so much that he wondered if it might have soaked into his skin, and he would smell it all the time, no matter where he was. He had never thought of minding it.

A month ago, when they moved into this new apartment in Karakara Town, she commented that it smelled like apples. She could never explain why, just like she could explain so few of her thoughtless ramblings. She said that it was a nice smell to have in an apartment, as opposed to cigarette smoke or alcohol or new paint. Ulquiorra hadn't smelled the apples, despite his familiarity with the fruit, but he let her be.

Within a week, though, the apartment no longer smelled of fruit, not even to her. She admitted she couldn't place the new scent that had filled it up after their furniture was loaded in, after she had decorated the living room and the spare room and the kitchen and the bathroom—all more spacious than the small place he had rented for four years. But every time he breathed in, he smelled the mixture and placed every nuance. There was wasabi and honey, which she added to so much of her food the sweet and spicy odor had worked its way into the carpet. There was the orange-scented fabric softener she used for the clothes, and the minty soap she had in a bottle in the kitchen, or the bubble-gum-scented soap in the bathroom. There was the floral shampoo she used when she took a shower, and stepped out of the bathroom in her rumpled pajamas with wet hair clinging to her back, the scent rolling off her for the first hour while she cuddled up to his side on the couch to put in another of her movies, or occasionally, to read one of the books from his extensive collection. There was her cinnamon toothpaste, the warm savory scents of breakfast and dinner mixed with all the spices and sweet things she stirred in, which wafted up and clung to the ceiling like balloons.

Then there was her. The scent she could never identify, or even pick up, but which he could catch from across the room. Humans might have tried to put a label to it, to describe it as like flowers or spring or a fire on a cold evening, but he did not. The scent was Inoue Orihime, unique and irreplaceable, and as he breathed in now, all the other scents of the apartment faded in comparison to that one scent, more familiar than all the others, which soaked into his skin as if to press her humanity into his soul.

One of her arms around his head twitched, and he remained still. He made out a hum that vibrated into his skull and felt her cheek move back and forth with it, her fingers shift on reflex. He waited, listened to the yawn, to each breath, imagined the brown eyes blinking open, and felt the smile he could just make out through the skin on his head.

"Mm … 'morning, Ulquiorra-kun," she murmured into his scalp. She rubbed her cheek against his hair again and ruffled it further out of place. "Sleep well?"

He blinked, and his eyes tried to stay closed against his will before he forced them open again.

"Sufficiently. Approximately eight hours' rest."

It took several seconds for the memory to hit of his nights in Las Noches, sleeping two hours or less, never more than four at a time. Certainly never eight. He had never needed it to function, so he never did. He didn't mention it. She would just bring up him taking an unintentional nap on her couch and the argument would go on for a while.

The thought of arguing made his lips tense before he smoothed them out. Not now.

She hummed. "Good." Then she rolled her shoulders against the back of her head and stretched out her legs, only to curl them up again close to his side. "I had lots of good dreams last night."

He felt her words on him like the first breath of air stepping outside in spring, no cars or humans passed nearby. "Hm."

"I dreamed we went to Disneyland again, and there was a rocket ride that was a real rocket and we went to space. And the moon was really made of cheese like the Americans say and it was covered in rabbits and I brought some back for Kuchiki-san so she could have moon bunnies. I've always wanted to go to space. One day, when they do space tours, I wanna go on one. That'd be fun."

Ulquiorra gave no response. He listened to the sound of her breath, to her heartbeat close to his ear. She showed no sign of letting go of him, and he made no attempt to move. The logical stream of thoughts in his head slowed to a point that he barely registered them, and instead of thinking, he simply _was. _Lying on the futon, holding in her gentle grasp, while the world started up outside and they made no effort to join it. Alone and undisturbed.

"Today's Sunday," she mumbled. He heard the smile in her voice.

"It is."

"Mm, no work today," she went on with a giggle, as if she had only just realized. She took an especially deep breath and let it out through her nose. "Maybe we can go to Kurosaki-kun's house. He's in Soul Society but I think Nel-chan's visiting. We can see her."

She paused, though not in expectation. He never gave replies unless necessary, and now, all that was necessary for him to lie there, as he was, and listen. If she insisted on going to visit Kurosaki Ichigo later on, perhaps then he would protest then.

Instead, she hummed and licked her lips.

"It's cold, though. Let's stay here for a minute."

Before he had a chance to think of what to say, she squeezed him tighter than before, so much he almost lost circulation in his ear still pressed to her chest. One of her legs slid under his back, the other wound over his stomach as she squeezed him with her legs, too, much like he had seen small children run to hug beloved older siblings. Only she was a decade past childhood, even if her personality sometimes made him question that. She held him as close as was possible without actually suffocating him, until one of her arms lifted away long enough to tug the comforter up to his chin, then wrap around his head again.

He blinked.

"What are you doing?"

"Warming us up," she answered with a broad smile. "Body heat's the best way, you know. That's why kids cuddle around the kotatsu in winter. Nice and warm."

Ulquiorra tried to come up with a comment, perhaps an analysis on human behavior, but for once, he couldn't. The idea sounded foreign and strange, and yet he could not bring himself to protest it.

With no words, only pleasant hums, the woman rubbed her cheek against his scalp and squeezed her arms around his head and her legs around his stomach. Her fingers still lost in his hair scratched at his scalp, her breath close to his skin, the scent melded with the fabric softener she used on the sheets, while the warmth of her skin soaked into him even through his pajamas, just as it had all night long. His eyes remained drooped, half-shut. They threatened to close again, but never quite managed it. The heaviness of sleep had long vanished, leaving only a quiet limbo, like the gray light that peaked over the horizon before the sun rose. Silence. Peace.

The sound of her breath against his hair, warm with each exhale. The beating of her heart against his ear and the rest of her body curled up against him. He stared at the ceiling, not really seeing, his eyes only just open.

His eyes shifted toward the clock on the desk, but he didn't move when he found it just out of his line of sight.

Rarely did he move when she did what she had once dubbed "cuddling," the very word strange on his tongue the first time he had tried it out, and apparently sounding just as strange, given how she had clamped a hand over her mouth to keep from giggling afterward—and still failed to suppress the laughter. He wouldn't have known what to do. Sometimes he mimicked her actions, like when she was ill and he laid her ear against his chest and stroked her hair, but other than that, the movements were still foreign. Apparently most humans just knew, or had been exposed to it early enough in life that it didn't feel so odd.

She had kept up this behavior over four years, since the first time he woke in her dormitory room to find her next to him in her roommate's bed, his head against her chest, her fingers in his hair. He hadn't known what to make of it, and after a minute he simply slipped out and stood next to the wall, eyes on the floor, the old emptiness within him shifted, replaced by something closer to peace. Something wrapped around him. But it caused no anxiety, no fear, nothing but the gentle sense that things would be alright.

They didn't speak of it, aside from her occasional comment and his brief response. He would have nothing to say or do. So he just lay there and let her scratch and rub her fingers over his scalp, squeeze his head and torso, something so natural for her and so new for him.

Over time, the strangeness remained, but with it had come the even stranger knowledge that each little touch showed affection. Showed care, showed emotions, some of which he still did not understand. That for some reason, she _enjoyed _feeling the life in him, even through the shell of his gigai, just as he felt the life in her. And then it was no longer just a tolerance. It was these mornings he savored, and occasionally those nights when it was time for bed but neither were tired, and she would hug him and talk about her day until one or both of them slipped into sleep.

It was those times where he allowed himself to simply be. To accept the existence he once denied held any meaning. To understand that he was here.

Here, with her.

He didn't know how long it had been when she rubbed his scalp one final time with her cheek, hummed, and released him, and the sudden lack of pressure against his skin reminded him of his mask cracking away. Naked. Uncomfortable. Strange, as if he had grown so used to the touch that it was already a part of him.

She stretched her arms over her head, sat up, and leapt to her feet. The covers fell behind her, the comforter far too large with only one person beneath it. She smiled around at the sunlit room as if seeing it for the first time.

"I'm hungry!" she announced, more to the room than to him. She looked down with that same wide, warm smile. "What do you want for breakfast! Oh, I know! I'll try something new! Today's the perfect day, since we have all the time we want! You can dressed if you want, Ulquiorra-kun, I'll go get started!"

She turned away and bounded off toward the kitchen. Her bare feet thudded on the ground, until she disappeared through the doorway and left him propped up on one arm on the futon, his hair a mess from sleep and her "cuddling," and his shirt still rode up to expose his bare stomach to the air.

The chill of the living room sent a shiver up his spine, and he creased his brow, shoved the comforter to the side, and pushed himself to his feet.

As she worked on her latest creation and the scents of strange, warm food wafted through the apartment, he wrapped one arm around her waist and held her tight to his side, the heat of her skin so familiar now he felt empty without it.

His proximity meant he had to be taste taster, but he had long perfected the technique of keeping her "extra ingredients" to a minimum, and after all, they had a whole day in for him to suffer the food poisoning before they slid under the covers and she warmed him up again with a quiet, peaceful, eight-hour embrace.


End file.
